Challenges Facing Higher Education Staffing & Human Resources

Challenges Facing Higher Education Staffing & Human Resources

Changes in the higher education landscape have placed more pressure on HR teams. From government funding cuts to a highly competitive market for employee recruitment, you are working harder than ever to grow an effective workforce. Whether it is retaining competent staff members, recruiting new talent or balancing payroll budgets, there are growing challenges faced by human resources in higher education. Many of these challenges can be overcome with the use of HR technology.

Accurate Position Descriptions

Universities have onerous position description requirements which can vary significantly from position to position. Compliance requirements can also change drastically. Add to this the need to attract and sort through candidates and you are in dire need of a way to streamline your position descriptions to make them more adaptable to the hiring process. This will ensure compliance and help you maintain the most up to date information required for hiring.

Applicant Tracking Software allows higher education human resources professionals to set up an eligibility checklist that will automatically compare candidate qualifications. You can define the employment metrics that you use to evaluate talent and then automate data collection for future analysis.

Hiring Competition

More than ever, universities are competing to find the best talent to fill their positions. Although prestige once played a role in hiring, job seekers have different priorities today. It’s all about the brand, the culture and the potential for career growth. While salary and remuneration still hold an important place in the eyes of employees, your career site and recruitment process have to reflect the modern approach that meets the expectations of candidates. This means you have to adopt the same practices used to make the consumer journey easier with a technology-based process that makes applying for a position easy.

Applicants desire a seamless automatic process that allows them to upload their CV or complete a form that will highlight their qualifications. The user experience is very important in this highly competitive age. Automating and streamlining your process attracts new recruits and provides them with a system for easy entry of their own information using a self-service model.  

Time Consuming Onboarding

Human resources in higher education institutions need an onboarding process that accommodates the multiple cohorts of your workforce. This includes all levels as well as differing status from full-time to casual contractors. Employee onboarding software is designed to help professionals from human resources in higher education better understand your institution, industry, and your new hire’s positions.

You can free up time for your department, so they are available where they are most needed while identifying opportunities for improvement in your onboarding processes. This includes common issues where new hires tend to struggle. Self-guided training portals can be used to walk new hires through the most important information needed to do their jobs.

An effective onboarding process improves your talent retention rates and keeps your workforce filled with valuable additions in all positions including non-academic staff. When onboarding can be tailored to meet the needs of all levels, it meets the specific needs of each person, so they settle into their jobs more easily.

Mired in Paper-based Processes

Many HR professionals in the higher education sector find themselves weighed down by paper-based processes. As already mentioned, the manual process of recruitment is just one example of how time-consuming HR-related tasks can become. When HR departments can adopt automated processes, they can encompass many manual tasks including:

• Payroll
• Time and Attendance
• Onboarding
• Employee performance and development
• Employee leave
• Scheduling
• Benefits administration
• Planning and analytics

By streamlining all of these processes, your HR team becomes more effective in their work freeing them up for more meaningful work. This can include updating job descriptions for more effective recruitment, employee development and training and new benefit and cultural initiatives to improve retention.

Communication Between Silos

When higher education institutions operate with silos, communication and collaboration can breakdown between departments and HR. Effective communication tools that allow easy collaboration across all departments help avoid common issues faced in acquiring, retaining and managing talent.

Through the hiring process, Applicant Tracking, Employee Management and Onboarding Software all play an important role in avoiding internal silos. Efforts are consolidated for more effective employee management from the hiring stage through to the career development stage.

Challenges commonly faced can be made easier with streamlined processes and approvals. This creates a transparent process to overcome the cumbersome and time-consuming bureaucracy of higher education institutions.  

Accountability is also improved with insight that allows you to continually improve your processes. All of this information is combined with analytics, providing data to support findings.

Higher education human resources leaders can adapt to the changing landscape by embracing modern technology. These solutions offer time-saving processes while providing a higher profile of advancement to potential recruits.

About The Author

Kayla is the Marketing Manager at Paypro Corporation overseeing all inbound and outbound marketing and sales efforts. She has 7+ years of experience working within the B2B and SaaS based solutions space and thrives on creating messaging and campaigns that introduce products and services to those who need them most.