Higher Education Human Resources: 4 Innovative Ideas to Implement This Year

Higher education human resources is different from human resources in any other industry. The culture in higher education is different, the compliance standards of the department are different, and the budgeting for your objectives is completely different as well.

To ensure that your higher education human resources team is staying in front of the curve when it comes to innovation, it is important to seek out new ideas and experiment with their applicability at your organization.

1. Phased Retirement

The higher education industry has more baby boomers than any other industry. Baby boomers are working longer than any other generation due to the current financial climate. While having the expertise of baby boomers is fantastic, it limits the ability to provide leadership development to high potential future leaders.

Higher education human resources teams can implement phased retirement to mitigate this issue. Phased retirement allows baby boomers to retire in more flexible ways over longer periods of time. For example, a baby boomer could drop down to part time hours, or even telecommute.

2. Dual Career Couples Assistance

Higher education human resources teams sometimes have a hard time finding new talent because of the remote locations of their campuses. Potential faculty and staff members don’t want to hamper their partner’s careers, so they are less likely to accept an offer from your institution.

Providing dual career couples assistance is a great way to solve this problem! Programs provide career services such as resume writing, interview coaching, and online job search assistance for the partners of your new hires.

3. Diversity & Inclusion initiatives

Matters of diversity and inclusion are hot topics in today’s society. Taking a progressive stance on these topics is a way to better engage your employees, and help retain and attract talent. Higher education human resources committees that are created solely for the purpose of promoting diversity and inclusion throughout your workforce will have positive effects long term.

5. Employee Engagement Communities

When employees are engaged at work, they are more productive and meet institution objectives. A simple way to engage your workforce is to create communities through your online intranet that allow for discussion, support, and comradery.

Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee is the President of Careerminds, a global outplacement company based in Wilmington, Delaware. He has over 20 years of human resource, outplacement, and career consulting experience. He has his bachelor’s in psychology and holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Louisiana Tech University. He is active in SHRM and ATD. Raymond’s been featured on SiriusXM Business Radio, CareerTalk, and the Wall Street Journal and he’s published a book titled, Clocking Out: A Stress-Free Guide to Career Transitions.