Category: Blog

PeopleAdmin A PowerSchool Company

2023 in Blogs: Key Topics and Top Tips for HigherEd

As 2023 comes to a close, here at PeopleAdmin, we’re looking back at some of the top resources we shared this year! From onboarding to compliance, from retention to employee development, from recruitment marketing to candidate experience, we covered so many topics. Check out some of our favorite reads below!

Hiring across campus roles

HigherEd hiring processes are unique for many reasons, but one key reason is the different types of positions found on campus. Position types can include faculty, staff, student workers, temporary seasonal workers, hourly workers, and more, and often, each of these categories has different requirements, approvals, forms, and hiring steps. Our customers are tackling this challenge thanks to Position Management and Applicant Tracking System, and they have some tips for others to get started. Read more!

Can digitized onboarding really make that much of a difference?

The answer is yes! In this competitive hiring market, and with many universities facing retention challenges, onboarding is key, and digitized onboarding is the standard that organizations need to meet today. Read more from HigherEd institutions who are saying “no” to onboarding paperwork and bringing an engaging onboarding process to every new hire.

What’s an employer brand?

If you’re wondering what an employer brand is, you’re probably not leveraging recruitment marketing techniques to your advantage! Creating a cohesive employer brand is an important aspect of building a talent pool today. Learn more about employer branding, and check out some of our top tips to get your hiring teams to start thinking like marketers.

Search committees don’t have to be slow

Your team has probably dealt with the challenge of creating effective search committees, and you might have struggled to get those committees to adopt new and efficient technology. Well, our customers have tackled that challenge too. Hear from the University of Alabama – Birmingham about how they successfully leveled up their search committee experience.

Connecting your systems

In a PeopleAdmin poll, HigherEd institutions were asked “How connected are the various systems on your campus?” 30% responded “Not connected—we have to manually enter data in multiple systems; there’s no data flow,” while 36% responded “connected but could be better.” Notably, no one chose the option: “Very connected—there are few issues that impact my team.” With interoperability still a key issue on campus, building seamless data flow and integrating your technology should be a top priority for your team. Check out some key takeaways from a webinar about interoperability, and hear from customers about how they’re leveraging integrations.

Career advancement impacts retention

44% of HigherEd employees disagreed that they have opportunities for advancement, and 34% disagree that their institution invests in their career development. According to the Harvard Business Review, 86% of professionals would change jobs for more professional development opportunities—clearly, career growth is something today’s workers care about. For more, check out this post about the link between retention and career growth.

Final thoughts

These are just a few of the topics that we researched and wrote about here at PeopleAdmin this year! Check out more resources on our website, and dive into our Annual Report on the State of HigherEd for an in-depth look at the challenges of 2023!

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December 20, 2023
PeopleAdmin A PowerSchool Company

Are you ready to tackle the HigherEd HR challenges coming in 2024?

As we approach 2024, the landscape of higher education human resources is poised to encounter a new set of challenges. Anticipating and preparing for these challenges is crucial for HR departments to navigate the evolving demands of the workforce. In this blog, we’ll dive into some of the challenges your team should anticipate, as well as innovative solutions to tackle them head-on.

Anticipated HR Challenges in 2024

1. Talent Acquisition in a Competitive Market

The competition for top talent is expected to intensify in 2024, making it challenging for higher education institutions to attract skilled professionals, especially in niche industries. To address this challenge, institutions should consider investing in employer branding, providing growth opportunities, and offering attractive compensation packages. Leveraging technology like AI-driven recruitment platforms can streamline the hiring process and help in identifying and attracting top talent.

2. Remote Work Management and Hybrid Models

The shift towards remote work and hybrid models isn’t going anywhere, and will continue to pose challenges in managing and maintaining a cohesive workforce. HR departments should focus on developing policies and practices that support remote work, ensure effective communication, and foster a sense of belonging among remote and on-site employees.

3. Reskilling and Upskilling the Workforce

Technology is continuing to disrupt industries, including HigherEd, making it important that your team focuses on reskilling and upskilling of the workforce to stay competitive. Institutions should invest in continuous learning and development programs to equip employees with the skills needed to adapt to technological disruptions, on-campus changes, and potential retention challenges.

4. Managing a Multigenerational Workforce

Your campus is already a multigenerational space, and the on-campus workforce is no exception. With Gen Z joining the workforce, and a tough economy that might discourage retirement, your faculty and staff come from multiple generations with unique work and communication styles and preferences. This can be a challenge, because it’s tough to please everyone, but embracing flexibility and dynamic communication styles can help create a positive work environment for everyone.

How to Prepare for 2024

As you consider the challenges to come, don’t get overwhelmed—there’s a lot your team can to do prepare. Here are a few ways to get started.

1. Embrace Technology and Innovation

Investing in HR technology solutions that facilitate talent acquisition, remote work management, and skills development will be crucial for higher education HR departments. Leveraging hiring and recruitment platforms, learning management systems, and communication tools can streamline processes and make your workforce more agile.

2. Prioritizing Leader and Manager Development

According to Gartner’s annual HR Priorities survey, leader and manager development tops the list of 2024 priorities for HR leaders. Institutions should focus on developing leadership capabilities to navigate the evolving work environment, build a talent pipeline, drive succession planning, and empower organizational success.

3. Build a Culture of Continuous Learning

In response to the need for reskilling and upskilling, higher education institutions should prioritize continuous learning and development programs. This includes offering relevant courses, workshops, and certifications to ensure that employees are equipped with the skills needed to adapt to technological disruptions

Final thoughts

HigherEd HR departments must take a proactive approach to the challenges of 2024, and that can make all the difference for their campuses. By embracing technology, prioritizing leader and manager development, creating a culture of continuous learning, and listening to the needs of employees, institutions can navigate the evolving HR landscape and ensure a resilient and adaptable workforce.

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December 12, 2023
PeopleAdmin A PowerSchool Company
Tips and Best Practices for Higher Ed HR Compliance

Compliance is a key and complicated part of the role of human resources teams, and this is especially true in higher education. The HigherEd industry is highly regulated, at both the state and federal levels, making the job even more complicated for HR teams that work on a college or university campus. Noncompliance, even when unintentional, can have serious negative consequences for an institution, ranging from legal and financial (including fines and penalties) to reputational. That’s why ensuring compliance is such an important part of the role of higher education human resources teams. Read on below for some top tips and best practices for ensuring higher ed HR compliance.

Challenges faced by Higher Ed

There are several HR challenges faced by HigherEd that are unique, making the world of compliance even more complicated. They include:
1. Regulatory complexity: Higher education institutions must navigate a web of federal and state regulations, including Title IX, FLSA, and ADA, which can be particularly intricate in an academic setting. Teams must navigate these human resources rules, regulations, and procedures to remain compliant.
2. Faculty and staff diversity: Ensuring compliance with equal employment opportunity laws while managing a diverse workforce of faculty and staff presents unique challenges.
3. Student employment: Compliance with regulations related to student employment, such as work-study programs and internships, adds another layer of complexity.
4. Varying types of employees: Colleges and universities may have to deal with different regulations for faculty, staff, part-time faculty, hourly workers, summer employees, and more—campuses have a greater variety of types of workers than many other organizations.
Higher Education HR Compliance Best Practices
1. Stay informed about regulations: Regularly monitor federal and state regulations to ensure compliance with labor laws, as they often evolve in response to changes in the workforce.
2. Document policies and procedures: Properly document all company policies and procedures, and ensure easy access for employees. This includes creating an accessible and easy-to-navigate employee handbook.
3. Regularly audit HR policies: Conduct regular HR audits to ensure that HR policies, such as leave policy, non-discrimination policy, and compensation policy, are compliant.
4. Establish specialized HR departments: Consider establishing specialized HR departments within colleges to address the unique objectives of different divisions.
5. Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion: Initiate regular conversations on campus among staff and departments to promote diversity and inclusion, enabling the institution to move into a more inclusive environment.
6. Leverage technology: Use HR compliance software to track regulatory requirements and obligations. Modern, digitized workflows can streamline the hiring process, improve data security, and facilitate compliance with regulations. HR compliance software can centralize and automate compliance-related tasks, such as tracking employee certifications and managing leave policies, thereby reducing the risk of non-compliance.
7. Standardization: Standardize hiring and interviewing procedures to ensure fair hiring.
8. Training and education: Provide thorough orientation for new hires that includes their responsibilities for HR compliance and clearly explains policies for reporting noncompliance. Provide ongoing training to HR staff, faculty, and supervisors on compliance requirements and best practices. Create higher education compliance checklists to stay on top of things.
9. Get leadership involved: Encourage executive leaders to champion ethics and compliance, and provide ways for employees to report unethical activity.
10. Collaboration across departments: Encourage collaboration between HR, legal, and academic departments to ensure a comprehensive approach to compliance.
The Role of Technology in Higher Ed HR Compliance

When it comes to HigherEd HR compliance, the right technology is key. A platform built for your HR needs supports your team in so many ways, including:
1. Efficiency and streamlining: Technology removes administrative burdens, eliminates duplicate processes, and centralizes information, making data insights more accessible. This streamlines communication, increases security, and automates tasks, thereby saving time for HR professionals.
2. Data management: HR technology allows for the centralization and management of vast amounts of information related to faculty and staff recruitment, onboarding, compensation, performance management, and compliance training. This helps HR professionals find more insight into information like retention, growth, and historical data about positions and job duties, and keep that information secure and accessible for compliance purposes.
3. Strategic role of HR: By leveraging technology, HR professionals can engage in more strategic work, such as employer branding to attract talent, and providing insights into retention and growth, rather than being bogged down by manual processes and administrative tasks.
4. Data-driven decision making: HR technology provides access to critical data, which is essential for financial forecasting, succession planning, and staff performance management, enabling HR teams to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Luckily, PeopleAdmin has the technology your team needs to keep track of employee information, stay audit-ready, and manage your employees. Built just for HigherEd, PeopleAdmin’s tools have the customizable, flexible workflows you need to tackle any HR challenge. Check out:
- Employee Records: With all documents in one portal and visibility into processes, you’ll ensure compliance and reduce time-consuming records management tasks. Plus, digital forms management means all faculty and staff have self-service, mobile-friendly access to HR forms like change-of-address to FMLA documents without requesting them in person or via email.
- Applicant Tracking System: In our powerful ATS, real-time dashboards with easy-to-understand visuals make it easy to interpret your data. Standard reports help you stay EEO compliant and audit-ready based on federal and state regulations. Customizable reports can be automated so you can share information with key stakeholders on your own schedule.
- Insights: Insights helps you uncover key insights into EEO compliance, budget planning, balanced hiring, faculty and staff hiring and retention, and more. And with automated reporting, you can easily schedule specific, easy-to-understand reports for institution leaders and key stakeholders — empowering data-based decision making across the institution.
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December 7, 2023
PeopleAdmin A PowerSchool Company
Navigating Change in Higher Education

Change is a constant in higher education, and institutions are continually evolving to meet the demands of the modern world. In a recent PeopleAdmin webinar, Mastering Change Management in HigherEd’s Digital Transition, experts from Central Oregon Community College and Chapman University shared their experiences with change management during two large technology implementations, offering tips and best practices for other institutions anticipating change in the new year. In a poll at the start of the webinar, 95% of attendees responded that they would be facing a change in the new year. 31% are facing a major change, while 64% are navigating minor adjustments. If you’re among that 95%, read on below.

Case Study: Central Oregon Community College.

Laurel Kent, IT Project Manager at Central Oregon Community College, explored her team’s journey through a Performance Management upgrade that took place over the past year.

Case Study Focus: Performance Review Transformation
- Moving from manual, PDF-based processes to a digital platform within PeopleAdmin.
- Addressing issues like inconsistency, versioning, and tracking associated with PDF processes.
- Utilizing the PeopleAdmin portal to streamline performance evaluation tracking.
Wins and Lessons Learned:
- Leadership Buy-in and clear project vision: Project support from the CHRO and CIO helped provide the appropriate resources. Dedicated project managers and functional analyst team, working collaboratively with HR, oversaw project timelines and deliverables to keep things on track.
- Clear project plan and frequent communication: Sharing the project progress and updates regularly across campus meant that end-users knew what to expect.
- Clear Roles and Timelines: Regular and predictable working sessions, clearly defined roles, and a reasonable timeline for testing and implementation kept things moving forward.
- Relationships matter: Make sure that you have users across campus who can answer questions and provide feedback.
- Build in time to fine tune product: A lesson learned was to include extra time for testing and stakeholder feedback. The team found it was important to see the product live and get direct feedback, and then tweak the platform as necessary.
Case Study 2: Chapman University

Robin Borough, Director of Talent Acquisition at Chapman University, shared insights from her many experiences with change management—and her top tip was a formula.

Change Management Formula from Beckhard and Harris: Change (C) = Dissatisfaction (A) * Desirability (B) * Practicality (D) > Perceived Cost (X)

“This formula is old, but everybody will be able to relate to it and see that it’s a real quick and dirty way to see if you can get the funding, and the sponsorship that you need, or if you need to prove something to get that funding and sponsorship,” said Robin. “‘C’ is the change. ‘A’ is the level of dissatisfaction with the status quo, and ‘B’ is the desirability of the change or proposed end state. ‘D’ is the practicality of the change—so are the steps to make this change practical and are we minimizing risk and disruption as much as possible? ‘X’ is the perceived cost of the change. For change to make sense, A * B * D has to be greater than X—meaning, I have to have a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of desire for something different, and the plan has to be practical. If AB, or D are zero, you’re out. Don’t even try to make the change. So much of what we’re doing is subjective, because there’s so many people and constituents involved with change management, so I thought this formula was an interesting way to think about it.”

Final Thoughts

In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, change is inevitable. The experiences shared by Central Oregon Community College and Chapman University underscore the significance of proactive change management, user-centric approaches, the value of learning from past successes and challenges—and how important it is to understand what you’re getting into from the start. As institutions embark on their journeys of transformation, these insights can serve as guiding principles for navigating the complexities of change in higher education. For more, check out this webinar on-demand.
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November 30, 2023