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  State of the College Union – Part 1

  Posted by Robert Rouzer on April 21, 2024 at 5:49 pm

  Thanks to Brenda and Jeremy for their article on employee retention.? They point out that satisfaction is a key factor in retention.? Many employers consider satisfaction as one important part of employee engagement.? Workforce engagement is the extent of workforce member’s emotional and intellectual commitment to accomplishing the organizations work, mission, and vision? Organizations with high levels of workforce engagement are often characterized by high-performance work environments in which people are motivated to do their utmost for the benefit of the students they serve and the organization’s success. [Baldrige Performance Excellence Framework]

  Determining the drivers of employee engagement requires the regular use of surveys and interviews since the drivers do shift over time.? For example, the importance of hybrid work schedules has become a more important engagement driver in recent years.? Knowing the specific drivers of engagement helps supervisors attend to those issues to increase engagement and retain employees.

  Student Affairs has always suffered from too few opportunities for advancement.? There are a fair number of entry level positions but the pipeline narrows rapidly.? Brenda and Jeremy cite several factors that contribute to the loss of employees.? After two years as a Resident Director or Program Advisor, the work can become boring.? Without promotion opportunities or ways to improve the work, and a 1 or 2 percent salary increase (or none if the institution’s got budget issues), it’s easy to see why employees depart.??

  Here are a couple of suggestions to address these issues: (1) Make greater use of students.? Many student centers have student building managers.? These are typically students that have excelled in working in various entry level positions.? Similar promotion opportunities could be created in student activities where skilled students could be made programming assistants and advisors.? In Housing, skilled student RAs could become resident directors.? Assuming that such students would be filling full-time employee vacancies, they should be paid at the same levels.? Some side benefits (and related downsides…) – students would leave these positions upon graduation, which means that salary levels get reset for the incoming replacements, and, as student employees, they would not require the same benefits as full-time employees.? The downside is the need to keep filling these positions.

  (2)? Team with other student affairs departments to cross-train entry level employees and allow them to job swap periodically.? This would allow such employees to expand their skill levels in student affairs and, hopefully, reinforce their passion and commitment to careers in student affairs.

  Again, thanks to Brenda and Jeremy for a thought provoking article.

  Rob Rouzer

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  Robert Rouzer
  Gallatin TN
  (615) 527-7707
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  Robert Rouzer replied 2 years, 1 month ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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