HR in Higher Education: 5 Fundamentals for Recruitment and Retention

Attracting and retaining top talent is a primary concern for organizations in every industry, but especially in higher education. Similar to how the employee experience has a direct effect on customer satisfaction, a competent and happy faculty significantly impacts the student experience. Your school’s reputation and success depend on how your students, alumni, and faculty feel (and talk) about their experience with your institution.

Here are five important HR trends higher education institutions are adopting to attract and keep talent. Combined with BambooHR^Ⓡ, these trending initiatives can help you develop new recruitment and retention strategies.

1. Hire a Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)

The CHRO, or head of HR, often reports directly to the dean or provost. They are responsible for spearheading all strategic aspects of HR, including:

• Employer brand building
• Initiatives that attract and retain high-quality staff and educators
• Employee communication and management
• Compliance regulation

Failing to address employee burnout can lead to institutions losing talent, and according to a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, 64% of faculty feel burned out. This is especially relevant for entry-level positions in student affairs, where demoralization is often enough to convince someone to change careers. Hiring a CHRO in higher education puts someone at the helm of staffing issues as they innovate incentives that improve retention, bolster recruitment efforts at large, and streamline hiring.

How to Do It

The CHRO you want for your organization will have ample experience leading HR staff and will understand the strategies required to build an impactful initiative.

Already have a CHRO? Think about how you’re currently leveraging the position. Can you optimize the role to better suit your institution’s values and goals?

Here are a few checklist items your CHRO can focus on:

• Establish specialized HR departments within colleges. For example, a college of humanities holds different objectives than a college of sciences. Encouraging your CHRO to build HR departments for each division can help your institution proactively offer support to your faculty, staff, and students.
• Build a long-term vision that safeguards your institution’s viability. The right CHRO will understand how various pieces of an institution should fit together to create a roadmap to success. Finding someone who can build an institution rooted in longevity is key.

2. Elevate Professional Development for Faculty and Staff

Educators need to be continuous learners to best serve their students. However, a CUPA-HR retention survey notes almost half of higher education employees feel they don’t have advancement opportunities at work, and about one-third disagree that their institution invests in their career development.

Fortunately, the world of higher education is waking up to the importance of ongoing development for faculty and staff. You can do the same and improve retention by showing your staff the value you place not only on their professional development, but also on what they bring to your institution.

How to Do It

What can you do to offer useful learning and growth opportunities to your faculty and staff? Here are two ways to start:

• Conduct quarterly or monthly evaluations. Although evaluations are commonplace in corporate work environments, higher education lags behind in this area. Lead the charge to incorporate regular evaluations (monthly or quarterly) for staff and faculty at all levels. A culture of regular feedback helps ensure that higher ed employees receive ample support in both their pedagogical development and research goals. Remember to set up appropriate adjustments for tenured professors who should be critiqued differently than other education professionals.
• Offer development programs. Provide attractive learning opportunities to faculty and staff, not just students. Examples include investing in a funding program for faculty to attend professional conferences, connecting researchers with seminars on how to apply for grants and fellowships, and offering full or partial scholarships for staff to continue their education at your institution.

3. Establish Your Online Brand

Conveying your institution’s prestige requires crafting a meaningful story and communicating it to potential hires. According to Glassdoor, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the organization actively manages its employer brand. While your institution’s brand is multifaceted, creating a robust online presence is critical in today’s digital age to expand your hiring network and draw candidates from pools you aren’t reaching through in-person or print communications.

How to Do It

Work with your marketing team to accomplish the following:

• Create high-quality content. By providing insightful articles, infographics, and videos that illuminate your institution’s core values, you can foster meaningful connections with prospective faculty and staff. High-quality content builds trust and generates three times more leads than traditional marketing tactics.
• Leverage social media. 65% of active job seekers say they’ve discovered work opportunities on social media, so in addition to posting job openings on your career site, you should broadcast them on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. Encourage hiring managers to share job posts on their department’s social media accounts, such as Instagram or X (formerly called Twitter), to better connect with job seekers within their field. Social media is a great place to post employee experience content as well. Employee testimonial videos and reels of department retreat activities can help potential hires picture what it would be like to work at your institution.
• Communicate your core values and brand across all platforms. Job seekers often go through multiple touchpoints to determine whether an institution is right for them. To avoid giving them conflicting information, make sure your messaging is consistent across your site pages, social platforms, press appearances, and marketing assets.

4. Become a Leader in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The US Supreme Court’s ruling to end race-conscious admissions has heightened conversations about inequality and privilege across institutions. 72% of full-time college faculty are white, while around 40% of undergraduates are students of color.

A university’s commitment (or lack thereof) to DEI will have an impact on whether or not prospective staff will choose to work or stay there. Don’t let the social and political issues that pervade your campus go unaddressed. Identify them now and roll out initiatives to fix them. The sooner you act, the more you can do to build a safe and attractive environment for faculty, staff, and students.

How to Do It

Here are a few initiatives your CHRO can push forward:

• Create a diversity and inclusion committee. Start by hiring a chief diversity officer (CDO). This candidate should have considerable experience promoting policies, behaviors, and attitudes that foster inclusion and diversity in academic institutions. They should understand the complexities surrounding issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion and use this expertise to select the right individuals for the committee.
• Initiate regular conversations on campus among staff and departments. Encourage your faculty to speak up about their experiences with diversity and inclusion on campus. Your CDO can oversee and lead these conversations. Promoting this kind of dialogue can help your team feel safe and comfortable, enabling you to find ways to tear down roadblocks and create a more inclusive environment that enriches the quality of education and research at your institution.
• Recruit educators of color. Students believe it’s important to see themselves reflected in the faculty and curriculum. HR teams should aim to start the teacher pipeline early and recruit more diversely. Since inadequate preparation is one of the main barriers to recruiting and retaining educators of color, this area must be addressed. Institutions can partner with teaching preparation programs that offer mentoring and job placement services to future educators of color. These programs allow your team to garner valuable connections that can pave the way for a more diverse and inclusive future.

5. Invest in an HR Software System

The right HR software propels your CHRO’s initiatives not only by digitizing and simplifying menial HR tasks, but by putting time-saving and strategic tools into the hands of recruiters—those tasked with finding and empowering the staff and educators who will transform your university for the better. In short, HR software assists CHROs in staying ahead of competing institutions.

How to Do It

Using a reliable HR software system can help your HR teams do the following:

• Make data-driven decisions. Metrics are your best friend. HR software can help you track candidate and employee data so you can identify what is and isn’t working, and make necessary adjustments.
• Automate repetitive tasks. There’s a lot of paperwork that goes into HR, especially during hiring. An applicant tracking system (ATS) helps you easily post openings for school employees, digitize necessary paperwork, request e-signatures, and streamline your hiring process.
• Save time. With less paper pushing and filing, you can provide a high-quality recruitment and hiring experience with time to spare. Devote hours saved to high-level strategy you simply wouldn’t have had the time for without software designed especially for HR.

With BambooHR, Building a Better Workplace Is Easier Than Ever

HR professionals in higher education face pressing challenges. To address burnout and solve staff shortages, you need the right resources.

With BambooHR, you can automate manual tasks, like sending reminders, running payroll, and scheduling reports. When these HR tasks are easier to manage, you'll have more time to focus on what matters most: helping employees thrive.

And we can help with that, too! You can create meaningful experiences for new hires, build trust and make staff feel heard with regular check-ins, and get in-depth data to help shape workforce decisions—all in one platform.

See how you can start making a difference today.