The Top Challenges Facing HR in Higher Education

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the higher education landscape was slowly but surely evolving into something different. As the coronavirus has caused incomparable changes in every industry, changes needed to be made quickly to ensure business stayed afloat, and colleges and universities were no exceptions to the rules. 

Online classes went from optional to necessity, overnight, and with the vast majority of campuses being completely shut down, many faculty and staff positions were forced to cease day to day activities, as they were simply not needed, or it was too dangerous to perform anything deemed “non essential” by the state. As schools kick back up in the coming weeks, issues facing HR departments at places for higher education are aplenty, with the old ones still existing, and new ones coming thanks to COVID. 

Here are a few of the top challenges, and ways to hopefully overcome them. 

Talent Pool

Perhaps viewed as a coronavirus silver lining by some, the global switch to digital workplaces (and, in this case, classrooms) did expand the talent pool of potential hires, as with remote work, proximity to an office or hub is no longer necessity, if both parties deem remote work as a means of employment. With that now-global talent pool, HR departments need to step up their games in order to ensure they are finding the best candidates to be interviewed for a given job. Ultimately, this should improve the education levels and workplace diversity, but it lies on HR recruiters to change their previously-localized habits into more worldly views of talent pools. 

Paperwork

As many colleges are extremely large businesses, change can sometimes be a very long process, and even though electronic records and email have been easily accessible for the entirety of the millennium, many universities still utilize in-hand paperwork when it comes to onboarding and training processes for new hires. Though not all people that the HR departments deal with are professors, it seems logical that those professors could share how they have their students send in all of their assignments online, and perhaps onboarding “assignments” for staff can follow suit, saving time, money, and simply making the university look more modern. 

Conflict Resolution 

Conflict resolution in the workplace is and has always been very important for a number of reasons. Employee retention, general office vibes, and ease of work are all made better when a conflict can be resolved with both parties respecting the other side’s stances. HR departments already had a tough time dealing with egos that often hang around places of higher education, but now there is the added challenge of enacting things in the digital world. On the good side, less exposure to colleagues can mean less chance for minor conflicts to evolve, but it can also make for a lot more passive aggressiveness to flourish, and that just doesn’t help in any workplace. 

Polishing the Product

With the talent pool being larger than ever, another responsibility that falls, at least in part, on HR communities is making their university look like the best fit for potential hires. This is a stiff task, and also involves pleasing current employees, as in the LinkedIn world it is quite common to reach out and simply ask someone how much they like working at a given place of higher education. HR departments need to really keep up with enticing trends and ensure their potential hires have everything a potential hire could want.

With a solid sell and a little extra work, these challenges in collegiate HR are not impossible to overcome, and although the way the college world is turning is certainly changing, it should ultimately be a change for the better, resulting in better places to work and better places for students to learn.