University Governance

Task Force on Employment Benefits
Final Report to the University Senate Executive Committee
This report summarizes the work of the task force since it was appointed at the close of AY2008-2009, and is intended to provide a basis for discussion with SenEx, early in 2009.
The task force has had regular communication by e-mail and met three times during fall semester 2008, with good participation by members.   The charge to the task force, a list of its members, and approved minutes for its meetings are posted online.   See: http://www2.ku.edu/~unigov/TFEB.shtml  (Late in October, Prof. Nalbandian reluctantly resigned from the body because of other commitments.)
The task force has relied to a considerable degree on information from the Office of Human Resources and Equal Opportunity, calling on the deep knowledge and experience of Madi Vannaman as ex officio member of the task force, but also on support from Deb Teeter, director of the Office of Institutional Research and Planning.  Ms. Teeter led us to such sources as Profiles, issued by that Office, as well as to the “Great Colleges . . .” report .   Vice Provosts Mary Lee Hummert and Danny Anderson also have made themselves available to the chair to respond to questions and offer suggestions.  Members of the task force made themselves available for informal discussions in such venues as the Human Resources Advisory Council and sought out information in other venues, e.g., national meetings of professional associations.

  • The task force members familiarized themselves with three especially useful sources, beyond the array of descriptive data about KU benefits that is readily available to all on the World Wide Web: an Association of American Universities Data Exchange data set—collected by Ohio State University—from 24 large research universities, including KU (the only Kansas institution represented);
  • results for KU faculty and professional staff who responded to the “Great Colleges to Work For” survey, conducted in spring 2008; and 
  • a  report from the Hay Group (a national consulting firm), commissioned in the last year by Kansas state government to review and comment on the benefits offered to state employees, compared with those offered by like employers, especially in the public sector.

The task force noted that there is no source of reliable data (fact or opinion) about what elements of current or prospective categories of employment benefits might weigh most significantly in recruitment or retention of KU employees.

The task force also noted concerns about a number of benefits issues that have been cited over the years by other bodies of some parts of University Governance and by some KU administrators.  Some of these issues are specific to categories of employment and some are shared across two or more employee groups.  An example of the latter is tuition waivers/assistance for employees and family/household members; an example of the former is the issue of health insurance costs for graduate assistants.  The task force also noted that there are various sources of authority—statutory, Regents policy, and KU policy—that must be invoked to address possible changes to categories of benefits (see the task force minutes of September 24th), beyond matters of cost.
The task force makes the following preliminary observations:

  • While the current economic downturn makes it unlikely that KU or the State of Kansas will be able to make significant financial improvements in compensation, including benefits, there is ample work to be done to understand better—and so communicate to decision-makers—the impact on the quality of KU as an international research university of the current patterns of benefits and of possible changes in those benefits.  The Hay Study (see above), while very useful in many respects, was not intended to examine any one sector of state government, in this case higher education, where competition to recruit and retain faculty and many staff must be viewed—more than almost all others sectors of state employment—in a national and sometimes international context, increasingly in competition for talented people being sought out by private sector employers.
  • There is strong agreement that decisions about possible improvements in benefits should be based on professional gathering and analysis of data, including obtaining opinion from all sectors of the KU community.  Equally important, the task force recommends that the values of the KU community also always should be reflected in the benefits program. 

 

  • It will be important to give serious attention to benefits issues that affect more than one category of employment (e.g., tuition waiver/reduction), some that are of consequence to some groups, e.g., vacation accrual, eligibility to request phased retirement; and, others that take account of changes in the national/global workforce, such as domestic partnerships of all kinds, multi-generational issues in some households, and, generally, of evolving employee needs during different phases of sometimes very long careers and changing market forces.  
  • The task force is prepared to recommend concrete steps, along the following lines, but only after discussion with SenEx, such that Governance:

 

(1)  recommend to the University administration an ongoing investment by KU, perhaps employing the professional skills of appropriate faculty and staff, e.g., in Public Administration, to work with HREO and OIRP on a rigorous study of employment benefits and their effects on recruitment and retention, with an eye to current and expected changes in the workforce going forward;

(2)  suggest that the University administration consider making common cause in this approach in conjunction with other Regents universities; and

  • examine the organizational pattern of its own standing committees that are related to various aspects of human resource issues, with an eye to better coordination and communication, perhaps by formal alignment of such committees across sectors, the better to advise those who conduct such studies and make recommendations to Governance.

 

Respectfully submitted:
WJ Crowe
January 2009