The Higher Ed Workplace Blog

Telework is growing increasingly popular in the United States. In fact, for more than 4 million American workers, “the office” can be anywhere they want it to be. If the trends over the past decade are any indication, telework will continue to grow as a viable working arrangement for many employees and employers. Here are four reasons to consider telework for your employees.

When it comes to organizational change, managing the change process itself oftentimes is the hardest part. When the University of California, Irvine’s HR team implemented a new HR model, they made sure to have a process in place to help usher in the change. Here are the steps they followed.

The NLRB indicated in the federal government’s May 22 spring regulatory agenda that it plans to issue a proposed rule by September addressing the extent to which students who perform services for private higher ed institutions are considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act.

On May 17, the House passed the Equality Act, which would make employment discrimination and other forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity unlawful. While the House vote is largely symbolic (as the bill is not expected to come up for a vote in the Senate), the bill’s approval in the House comes at a time when the Supreme Court is considering three cases that look at whether the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII prohibition against sex-based employment discrimination extends to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Each year, CUPA-HR’s Higher Education Human Resource Awards honor individuals, teams and institutions that are doing outstanding and innovative work around advancing diversity and inclusion in higher ed, elevating the HR role on campus, furthering the higher ed HR profession, and giving selflessly of their time and talents to CUPA-HR and their higher ed HR peers. Here, we celebrate this year’s recipients.

Our comments highlight higher education’s belief that an increase to the salary threshold is due and that DOL has an obligation to update the threshold from time to time to ensure the exemptions are not abused. Our comments also offer support for DOL’s decision to update the salary threshold by applying the methodology used in 2004 to current salary data and its decision not to make any changes to the duties test and offers several suggestions for improving the proposal.

As HR professionals, we need to listen. We need to really listen. Don’t start thinking about what your response will be. Just listen. The conversation is not about you, it’s about the person talking to you. So just listen.

Findings from CUPA-HR’s 2019 Professionals in Higher Education Survey shed some light on which higher ed-specific professional-level positions are most likely to be impacted if DOL implements its proposed exempt salary threshold of $35,308.

Each month, CUPA-HR General Counsel Ira Shepard provides an overview of some labor and employment law cases and regulatory actions with implications for the higher ed workplace. Here’s the latest from Ira.

Salary benchmarking is not one-size-fits-all — especially when you’re looking at groups as varied as administrators, professionals, staff and faculty on a college or university campus that is unique in its combination of Carnegie class, affiliation, regional location and mission. The question, then, is how to tailor your benchmarking efforts to take these variables into account and choose data that is appropriate to your unique needs.