Results of Workforce Assessment Planning
June 2, 2010
To: The St. Lawrence Community
From: William L. Fox, President
Date: June 2, 2010
Subject: Results of Workforce Assessment Planning
Today, we took the most difficult action step yet in making St. Lawrence stronger in its financial position and prospect. Since I arrived less than a year ago, in the midst of the worst U.S. economy in 75 years, our community has worked cooperatively in a well designed process of study and discussion over two semesters that defined, explained, and demonstrated repeatedly the necessity of cost discipline and expense reduction.
Our goal this spring was to reduce our non-faculty staffing budget by $1.8 million, net of the costs associated with any type of departure. This budget reduction represents the balance of the $5 million projected deficit in 2010-2011 we faced in our annual university operations. The Recession Response and Planning Task Force identified about $3.2 million in reductions to operations.
We will have 9% fewer non-faculty positions at St. Lawrence as of July 1. Of a total non-faculty employment of 580, 50 positions will be eliminated.
21 of the positions are vacant now, or will be vacant as a result of natural attrition or early retirement. Of the 50 non-faculty positions eliminated, 17 are administrative, 16 are in SEIU (facilities or dining services), 14 are in CSEA (clerical) and 3 are technical/confidential staff.
However, between 12 and 13 people actually will depart, mostly office and program personnel.
The final number of people departing will depend on the results, now in progress, of the bumping processes that are outlined in the contracts with our CSEA and SEIU bargaining units. The contractual rights of seniority include a bumping protocol and have been reviewed carefully with union leadership in the weeks prior to finalizing our plan, so we are confident that all involved have understood exactly what would happen. Because we have had the discipline to hold positions vacant, it is likely that no members of SEIU will be left without a position, unless by choice.
We also will have 21 continuing employees whose positions are being reduced by one to three months (for example, a 12-month employee becoming an 11-month employee).
We have achieved our goal of saving $1.8 million net of costs associated with early retirement and severance. Therefore, our personnel reduction process for the 2010-2011 academic year has been completed. We will maintain our hiring freeze over the next year.
Let me give you more information about our processes and decisions. We used every possibility available to reduce our personnel budgets:
*Natural attrition through resignation or planned retirement, and enforcing as much as possible a hiring freeze to create vacancies;
* An Early Retirement Incentive Program, offered to 66 eligible employees, resulted in a favorable 24% response rate with 16 applications. Many of these positions will be eliminated, easing but not canceling the need to move to the process of involuntary separations.
*Restructuring work, through use of technology or new collaborations, within office or between offices.
*Involuntary separations or position reductions were determined in the Workforce Assessment Process that involved a campus-wide review of non-faculty positions with respect to original purpose and current functions, efficiency, relationship to core mission, and skills required. Each vice president developed a set of recommendations that were assessed by a Senior Staff study group, then analyzed by the entire Senior Staff. Our premises were to be fair, equitable, ethical, legal and abiding by contracts; to defer to Phase II any decisions that would be considered strategic redirection; to retain the student experience as core and to focus on positions and not performance of staff within the positions.
For our colleagues who are leaving the University, we provide a severance package that is determined by years of service (one week’s salary for every year worked, with a minimum of four weeks’ salary and a maximum of 16 weeks’ salary); and tuition benefits for employees themselves or dependents in college or who made a decision by May 1, 2010, to enter college next fall, consistent with current policy. We will provide career counseling at no charge, job search workshops plans, and connections to regional resources for financial planning. All separated employees will be extended health insurance through COBRA as required by federal regulations.
*Changing a limited number of benefits. We will save over $125,000 in the following ways:
*Effective July 1, the employee discount at Brewer Bookstore will remain 15% on books but be 10% on all other purchases.
*We will continue to close the University between December 24 and January 1. However, the workdays that fall between December 26 and December 30 must be taken as vacation days (and thus deducted from your annual vacation allowance) or without pay if you wish to retain vacation days for other times.
Many of our trustees told me that in their business careers they, too, have been through the equivalent personal challenges of reducing the size of an organization’s staff. I have been through it myself at another place in a different time. The prior experience, however, in no way lessens the burden of such a grief. Nevertheless, as life and faith teach, as music and art express, there will always be darkness before the dawn, but when the day comes, it comes often with a chance for adaptation and renewed strength. And for St. Lawrence that bright tomorrow will also come again and soon.
