NIU is fortunate to have talented and dedicated faculty and staff to serve our students. Making smart decisions regarding employees is important to our mission, vision and values, as well as to the financial health of the university.
Wages account for more than 50% of the university’s annual expenses and, therefore, require constant evaluation and responsive planning to help control costs, anticipate future needs, reduce risks and ultimately ensure that NIU remains adaptable in a competitive and changing environment.
In April 2024, President Freeman held a monthly leadership meeting to provide all unit leaders with a financial update. There, she directed those leaders to focus their personnel strategy on four key areas that would help mitigate spending, reduce the overall structural deficit and strengthen the university's financial position. These areas are reducing or eliminating reliance on extra help; reducing or eliminating non-essential overtime; reducing or eliminating additional pay; and developing strategic personnel management within the units.
While faculty positions have historically and currently followed an annual process for assessing which vacancies will result in searches, there are no similar mechanisms for staff positions. The development of position control for staff is necessary to help align our staffing needs with mission-critical objectives.
Additionally, the university spends upward of $3 million in off-cycle, base adjustments for staff because of mid-year department reorganizations or supervisor-requested job enhancements on certain positions.
For these reasons, effective Nov. 19, 2024, the university paused reviewing and processing all new off-cycle increments resulting from supervisors’ requests for job enhancements, promotions and reorganizations.
In addition, with all new requests, the university has temporarily paused the searches for non-essential positions. Division leaders have determined, and will continue to determine, which current and future searches are crucial and must continue.
The university will engage working groups to focus on ways in which the university:
- Can develop a shared savings mechanism with non-essential vacancies by developing procedures for position control.
- Integrate requests from supervisors for reorganization and job enhancement opportunities into the annual budget cycle so that division leaders can assess all changes at once, rather than one at a time.
- Review and benchmark shared service models for common staffing resources, such as information technology, business operations and administrative functions.
These efforts will also focus on implementing other measures to enhance administrative efficiencies. These measures will ultimately help with our deficit mitigation strategies. HRS will resume these reviews after those plans have been developed (anticipated in early 2025).