Building the Great Remain

In two recent opinion pieces, featured in Inside Higher Ed, Dr. Joshua Kim, director of Online Programs and Strategy at the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL) and a CNDLS senior fellow for Academic Transformation, Learning and Design at Georgetown University, writes about hiring in higher ed. The first article hypothesizes that "higher education is in the midst of an invisible understaffing epidemic," and the second article postulates that higher ed professionals who are of retirement age would remain in their jobs if their institutions gave them a degree of flexibility, even if these individuals can afford to retire in the coming months and years. He suggests that "The flip side to the academic Great Resignation story might be the Great Remain."

How might hiring managers and human resources departments utilize this information to weather The Great Resignation and prevent faculty and staff burnout?

Start by reviewing which faculty and staff in your institution have outlined a retirement plan. Talk with them about staying longer and give them options to continue working part-time, remotely or work a portion of the year (four to six months of the year). Then focus your energy on hiring the next generation of faculty and staff and giving your current long-term employees a needed break or a lighter load.

Dr. Kim writes, "When your identity and job become integrated, you are less likely to leave that job. It is hard for some of us to imagine who we would be without a connection to our academic roles." He points out that many higher ed professionals would love the opportunity to "move into retirement down a ramp, rather than over a cliff."

Why not utilize some of your faculty and staff in new ways to address the immediate turnover and tumult? Now might be the right time for your institution to be more creative and less rigid in its organization charts and job requirements (e.g., which positions are full-time, part-time, in-person and remote). Plus, Inside Higher Ed can help you fill the high-priority and hard-to-fill openings to cover the urgent gaps. Hopefully, by implementing these recommendations, you will positively move your institution forward and save yourself from burnout too.