Class in session: Employee Retention 201

What you'll get from this article

• Borrow a strategy from Corporate America to make your institution more appealing to current and prospective employees.
• Package other benefits and rewards as incentives to help stem the attrition tide. Money isn’t everything: Compensation isn’t always the reason for turnover. 
• Create an employee value proposition that uses tangible and intangible benefits to answer the question, “Why would someone want to work here?”

Read more in the article below. Get TIAA thought leadership first.

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Pop quiz:

Which kind of career path would you prefer?

A. One where salaries are low, the opportunity for advancement is scarce, remote work is a fantasy and the balance between work and life is tipping more toward work.

B. One where employees love their jobs, feel their work has purpose, enjoy their retirement and tuition benefits and paid time off.

C. Is this a trick question?

If you answered C, you are correct. Answers A and B are actually two facets of the same industry: They reflect the Jekyll-and-Hyde scenario facing many who work in higher education.

New TIAA Institute research uncovers some significant contradictions that employers looking to recruit and retain workers need to address.¹ The research presents a cohort of higher ed employees who value their retirement benefits (98%), health insurance (94%), amount of paid time off (92%) and tuition reimbursement (62%).

Yet more than one in three say they are likely to leave within the next two years for better pay (49%), work-life balance (35%) and advancement opportunities (34%).

Another revelation: The power of higher ed’s mission may be losing primacy among employees’ other priorities. While 45% of those who hire employees in colleges and universities said that mission was a top reason employees choose to work at their institution, only 32% of the employees said the institution’s mission was a key factor in their recruitment or retention.²

This is a big problem for employers in higher ed: More than half of colleges and universities saw an increase in employee turnover last year, with smaller schools particularly vulnerable.³ Employers need to do a better job of demonstrating the tangible and intangible benefits of working for them, to better compete for new employees and satisfy current workers.

Enter the “value prop”

Long embraced by Corporate America, employee value propositions (EVPs) highlight an organization’s comprehensive benefits to help hire and retain employees. Ideally, an employee value prop identifies the mix of tangible (compensation, medical, retirement plan, tuition reimbursement, etc.) and intangible rewards (culture, community, mission) that make working at an organization especially attractive.

Essentially, an EVP acts like a mission statement to answer the question: Why would someone want to work here?

“Employees sometimes leave for bigger jobs outside and inside the University of Arkansas system,” notes Christopher Hickman, director of administrative services and chief human resources officer at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

“We’ve used this process of creating an employee value proposition to understand and define UAPB as a place to join and grow professionally before moving on—and are beginning to market our proposition as a launch pad.”

Lessons from Corporate America

While employee value propositions have been a fixture of Corporate America for decades, less than 40% of higher ed institutions use them—or use them effectively.

For it to do any good, you need to share it with your employees. Only 12% ofhigher ed employees said they wereaware of their institution having a value proposition,according to TIAA Institute research.⁴

“If Corporate America is good at anything it’s responding to market signals with new ideas,” says Mark Barden, an expert in brand transformation and author of “A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations into Advantages and Why It’s Everyone’s Business.”

Barden continues: “You need to play your hand very well if you can’t win on salary alone. The same applies for hourly labor. When all employers are trying to hit the same salary or wage in a market, other things come into play, like workplace culture and benefits.

“It comes down to the basics of strategy: What do those folks value above and beyond their pay? How are you uniquely qualified to offer that?”

Creating a value proposition for employees

The TIAA Institute brought together 30 HR leaders from nearly two dozen institutions for a full-day workshop on how to craft compelling EVPs. A crucial takeaway: It all starts with asking the right questions.

• Where are you currently experiencing success with employee satisfaction?
• What’s working/not working around messaging?
• Which positions are the most critical? Do you communicate well with the employees in those roles?
• Would investing in areas such as culture, community and professional development improve hiring and retention?
• What is truly unique about your institution and how do you best communicate that to prospective and current employees?

The TIAA Institute analyzed our own data and worked with research from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) to define some compelling reasons to work in higher ed.⁵ See belowto learn the top five elements to a value prop.

Those who work in the higher education industry have never been there to collect Wall Street salaries, and many truly value the advantages of working at a college or university. Ironically, taking a page from Corporate America’s playbook could help higher ed polish its own value proposition and understand what’s most important to different groups of employees.

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