In the months following the end of the university’s hiring freeze, officials are working to fill the most critical vacant staff positions in their departments.
Deans and department heads added, however, that many of their operations will continue to be stretched thin until the economy improves.
During the freeze — which was officially lifted in July — and the past few years preceding it, many colleges and offices were blocked from replacing employees who left their posts, leaving voids in the university in fields from maintenance to marketing.
In the business school, most of the vacant positions are high-level office staff in its career services, marketing communications and executive education offices, Dean Anand Anandalingam said.
Although his college has been able to get by with its existing staffing levels, he said he is grateful it won’t need to indefinitely.
“It certainly provides a lot of relief,” Anandalingam said. “And just the thought that we can go and increase our human resources and that there’s more help coming our way, it makes both psychological relief and emotional relief.”
In the agricultural and natural resource school, Dean Cheng-i Wei said he has received many requests for new hires since the freeze was lifted. Budgets remain tight, he said, but he would like to take stress off employees who have been forced to do multiple jobs to compensate for the vacant posts.
“Everybody had to do more for less,” he said. “They understand the economic situations and what they have to do and to help, but after a while, eventually they are exhausted.”
Other deans specifically mentioned a need to hire employees in advising, research and budget offices.
Outside the academic departments, Facilities Management is looking to fill about 20 positions, mostly to work with the university’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, but also for managerial posts in work control and housekeeping offices, said Nancy Yeroshefsky, the department’s assistant director for human resources and payroll.
Although that hiring would only put a dent in about 100 total vacancies in the department, Yeroshefsky said employees seemed to step up to the challenge of maintaining the quality of service despite the shortage.
“We’ve had to work a little harder and a little smarter,” she said.
“We got creative about doing the same work without having the same people.”
Several Facilities Management workers said having to do more work with fewer co-workers in the past few years has been trying and hoped the end of the hiring freeze would bring in some new hands.
“We’ve lost three or four people last year,” said an employee who asked not to be named to avoid repercussions for talking to a reporter. “Working short-handed has been difficult.”
The staffing shortage even extended to the upper administrative level. Provost and acting university President Nariman Farvardin said his own office has been understaffed, but he added that it has no immediate plans for new hires.
While deans said the end of the hiring freeze certainly makes it easier to address staffing problems, they recognized it did not signal the end of the persisting budget problems or replenish lost resources.
“The lift of the hiring freeze is a relief, but it does not in itself provide resources,” James Harris, dean of the arts and humanities college, wrote in an e-mail. “Until we know the budget picture for next year we will need to be cautious.”
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