Northern Kentucky University is set to implement a new policy starting Jan. 1 that will require administrators, staff, student-employees and other non-faculty employees to be on campus five days a week.
This will effectively curb remote work across much of the university. The change will not affect faculty and advisors.
The move comes after the most recent meeting of NKU’s Board of Regents, which approved several other labor policies, most notably a policy allowing tenured and tenure-track faculty members to voluntarily leave the university in exchange for a buyout. Tenured administrators could also take a buyout.
As it relates to remote work, employees can apply to their supervisors for two so-called “flexible work” days a week, where they don’t need to be on-site, by Dec. 1.
Exceptions are subject to annual reviews, and employees must meet certain criteria in order to be eligible. Requests will be made to the employee’s immediate supervisor and must also receive approval from their office head or dean, the relevant vice president, and the university’s human resources department.
“We see this policy as a sound compromise,” said NKU President Cady Short-Thompson as the NKU Board of Regents meeting Wednesday morning, “one that offers flexibility and meets institutional needs.”
Short-Thompson said the policy change came following a long period of feedback and shared governance processes.
The document eliciting the policy, which you can read here, lays out the processes and stipulations around off-site work. Employees cannot apply for off-site work permissions during the first 90 days after they’ve been hired.
Moreover, they must have earned either an “exceptional,” “highly successful” or “successful” rating on their most recent performance evaluation. Anyone undergoing disciplinary action is ineligible.
Employees would not be able to appeal a denial. Moreover, those employees who are approved “may not engage in childcare, eldercare or similar family responsibilities during times when they are supposed to be working,” according to the policy. “Employees must identify appropriate care regardless of where they are working.”
Regent Cori Henderson asked about employees who had been hired on specially as remote workers.
“I think that there is a part of the policy, as I think you know, that allows for exceptions, and it is up to the supervisor as to whether or not that exception will be granted,” Short-Thompson said. “I think we also recognize that in a handful of cases, we can’t find the talent or the skill sets that we need in this immediate region.”
The meeting also saw the approval of two other policies, a revision of its non-discrimination polices and the new work separation agreement, both of which were passed as part of the meeting’s consent agenda.
The non-discrimination policy revisions include changes to the university’s process of investigating discrimination and harassment complaints and add explicit protections against antisemitism. The regents did not discuss this policy.
The buy out policy, however, which allows eligible faculty to leave in exchange for “a lump sum, one-time payment of 80% of their base salary (full or part-time salary), not to exceed $100,000, and an additional lump sum of $10,000, in recognition of health care costs,” according to university documents, did elicit some comments from the Board’s faculty regent, Sandra Spataro.
While Spataro said she was in favor of the policy, given the university’s financial troubles, she worried about the effect it might have on the workload of the teaching staff and the overall dynamic between the teaching and non-teaching workers at the university.
“There’s going to be an increase in workload on those who do not participate in this program, and that’s just adding stress to our workforce that is already quite stressed…,” Spataro said, later adding, “We got to be aware that we are sowing further divide in the employee community.”
Spataro eventually voted for the policy, despite his trepidation.
“Reducing tenured faculty could be incorrectly interpreted as NKU compromising or lessening our priority on academic excellence,” Spataro also said before the vote was cast. “That’s absolutely not the case, and we’ll want to make absolutely sure that we do everything we can to communicate that continued commitment with great clarity because people can perceive things in very different ways.”