There’s a new change in the work program regarding spring employment. There was an email from the Blackburn College Cabinet sent to supervisors in the work program telling them not to promise any positions for the coming semester unless it is in campus services or dining and hospitality. So far, there have been complications with this policy shift and it has been seen as a disadvantage to non-operational departments.
This is not a policy change so much as it is a policy reiteration according to Dean of Work Rob Weis. It has always been standard that supervisors and managers wait until after the spring semester begins to fill positions that are left vacant from the previous fall semester. Every semester, the department managers get together to reallocate positions in each department. Almost always, Weis said, there are fewer students in the spring semester than in the fall semester. This calls for fewer positions available in the spring semester. “The allocation,” Weis explained, “is the bare minimum amount of employees it would take to make the department function.” He also admitted that campus services (CS) and dining and hospitality (Ding) are usually the departments that lose the most employees. The allocation often takes away positions from non-operational departments to give back to CS and Ding.
Students who have jobs at the end of the fall semester will keep the same job going into the spring semester, no matter how the allocation turns out. For example, if a department comes into the spring semester with a new allocation of eight students, but 10 students are still employed from the previous semester, all 10 will keep their jobs. If one gets fired, however, they cannot be replaced since they are still above the allocated number. If a manager or supervisor would like to hire above the allocation, they have to take the request to the work committee where they get to make their case on why they need the additional position.
If supervisors or managers would like to hire for an open position, they have to advertise for that position for a full 24 hours before making a hiring decision to ensure that all students who want to apply can be considered. There have been problems in the past, according to Weis, where supervisors or managers would promise students positions without going through the proper channels to allow all interested students to know and apply for the job. This problem is even worse at the end of the fall semester when supervisors and managers want certain students to transfer to their department so they make promises they cannot keep. “In the past,” said Weis, “our managers and general managers have honored these promises, but it’s causing CS and Ding to have less employees than they need.”
Provost Dr. John McClusky admitted, “Some may think of [this policy] as a disadvantage to the non-operational departments.” He went on to explain that there is always a request for more workers than the number of students available, but they have to put more emphasis on where the needs are. “Sometimes I think CS is more important than I am,” McClusky said. He pointed out that he would like to offer more positions related to students’ majors, but there is work that needs to be done that isn’t always the most fun.
McClusky also acknowledged a tension between operational jobs and the jobs that pertain to a particular major. “The tension is inherent in any organization,” he explained. While the hiring process does not work in everyone’s favor all the time, it is not something that McClusky would change. The problem he wants to fix in the work program has more to do with the lack of diversity in different departments, not the hiring process.