Looking out for Princeton’s working Tigers

They are Princeton University employees.

But as disparate as the duties they perform are, each falls within the University’s efforts to shield its community from the harsh realities of the economic recession.

As University administrators anticipate a 25 percent decrease in the value of the endowment by the end of the current fiscal year in June, they are preparing for the budget cuts that will come in July. Policies regarding employee hiring and salaries are set to change. Savings from new hiring and salary measures make up almost 6 percent of the $82 million the University expects to cut from its $1.3 billion budget, University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said in an interview.

She explained that the University will keep hiring and employee raises down while maintaining functionality and protecting existing workers from the worst of the economic downturn.

Unlike many of its peers, Princeton has not instituted a hiring freeze. Instead, the University has established a system designed to save money by keeping as many job vacancies as possible unfilled and reducing the number of hiring requests.

Under this system, called vacancy management, each request for the creation of a vacancy will be subjected to review, Cliatt said.

Under the new system, departments and offices will submit their requests for additional employees to one of two administrators, who will “determine whether there is sufficient need ... to post a vacancy,” Cliatt said in an e-mail. Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin will review all requests for new faculty, and Vice President for Human Resources Lianne Sullivan-Crowley will have authority over staff requests.

“The decision may be made in some cases that vacancies be left unfilled and in other cases that the office or department’s needs can be met with employees who might work reduced hours or for shorter terms,” Cliatt added.

Following this approval, she said, “[t]he hiring process proceeds still as normally,” noting that individual departments and their officers will still initiate and conduct the actual hiring as they did before the implementation of the new system.

This will not affect job searches already underway, Cliatt said, explaining that no new searches will be authorized without further review.

“We’re preserving everything that is essential,” Dobkin said. “But when we take cuts, we are taking cuts out of things that are valuable parts of the intellectual life of the campus that are not necessarily contributing to essential parts of our mission.”

Sullivan-Crowley declined to comment for this article.

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“Every vacancy that you leave open maintains the human capital,” Cliatt explained. “That saves a job, that’s the long and short of it.”

In the past, each department would deal with its own hiring, but now all such requests must go through either Dobkin or Sullivan-Crowley, Cliatt said. Both Cliatt and Dobkin maintained that the possible inefficiencies and backlogs resulting from the centralization of this approval process will not lead to a “de facto hiring freeze.”

“The backlogs won’t be long enough for that,” Dobkin said. He added that his staff is up to the challenge of forging through what could potentially be hundreds of requests.

“One of the things that has happened is that the people in my office are working harder now,” he said. “I have a very good staff.”

Cliatt said administrative units will be forced to rethink whether certain jobs are really so important that their duties can’t be shifted to existing employees.

“There will be positions that will be hired, so you can’t classify it [as a de facto hiring freeze],” she said.

“Because departments understand that the bar has been raised, that they need to make an internal assessment,” they “would step back and think, ‘Is this mission-critical?’ ” she explained.

The University will continue hiring, especially for very pressing needs, Cliatt said, adding that “the most urgent needs get the most urgent attention.”

Ranked faculty members, however, are exempt from the rule requiring approval from Dobkin or Sullivan-Crowley. The importance of such established faculty to the intellectual community at Princeton warrants special treatment, Dobkin explained.

He said, though, that funding for visiting fellows — scholars brought in by various research centers who have either finished their Ph.D.s or are faculty members at other institutions — is being cut and may result in fewer requests being approved.

The administration is currently in the process of explaining the policy to the various departments.

“[Departments] want to make sure they understand the process,” Cliatt explained, adding that it was too early to gauge the departments’ reactions to vacancy management.

Salary raises buffer non-union employees

Some University employees can at least breathe sighs of relief about their paychecks. In a time of rampant layoffs and salary freezes, the University will continue to raise salaries for some employees.

As the University tightens its belt, the administration will overhaul the way it funds salary increases. Instead of a Merit Increase Program (MIP), which divides excess funds among workers based on their individual performances, the University will shift on July 1 to a Salary Increase Program (SIP), which will grant raises based on employees’ current salaries.

The SIP will be a regressive, tiered system in which employees in the lowest salary levels will receive the highest percentage raises, while those at higher salary levels will receive smaller percentage raises, Cliatt explained. There will also be an absolute cap on raises: The largest raise any individual will receive is $2,000.

The new policy will favor the lowest ranked faculty and academic professionals as well as the lowest paid staff and administrative support employees, Cliatt said.

“The move to a SIP is one of many cost-saving measures to help save [money] on salaries, while paying special attention to the lowest paid members of our community,” she added.

But the change from the performance-driven MIP to the SIP will not eliminate incentives for employee productivity, Cliatt explained.

“Managers can decide to grant the full standard increase, a 50 percent increase or a zero percent increase, so there remains some discretion,” Cliatt said. “The rationale is that if the individual department thinks an employee is working at a level that is not worthy of that increase, the department managers still have some leeway.”

But some employees, including Dining Services worker Carole Sutphia, said they believe the SIP may not be the best system for all workers.

“For some [the SIP] is good; for some, it’s bad,” Sutphia said, explaining that some employees who performed well this year would have gotten higher raises under the old, merit-based system.

Under the MIP, workers are evaluated on a scale of one to five by their supervisors. The scores are used to determine the size of the raise each worker receives.

“My raise would’ve been higher,” Sutphia said. “For the first time, I got a 3.5 on my performance review.”

Not all workers employed by the University will be eligible to receive raises under the new salary program. Union workers, for example, will be exempt from this salary policy change.

“Employees who are members of a collective bargaining unit are governed first by their union contract for various aspects of hiring and employment related to personnel policies, salaries and benefits,” Cliatt explained. She declined to discuss union salaries because one union has yet to vote on its new contract.

The SIP also will not apply to casual workers, whose contracts last up to five months for work on specific projects or to cover for an employee on leave.

Having percentage increases is “the most equitable” way of maintaining equality across all areas, Cliatt said. By basing raises on percentages rather than on set dollar amounts, the University can ensure that the raises of those at the higher income levels are proportional to their salaries and expected expenses.

The Priorities Committee — composed of students, faculty and staff and chaired by Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 — examined and voted on the SIP salary recommendation initiated by Human Resources.

Caasi Love, a Dining Services assistant manager, praised the adoption of the SIP as a change that will “somewhat” ease the situations of workers living around the campus.

“I think as far as living in this area — Princeton and Lawrenceville — to survive, it’s a good thing to do,” Love said. “Mercer County is an expensive area. People should be able to work where they live.”

— Jack Ackerman and Jonathan Evans contributed reporting to this article.