Universities plan for rapidly retiring staff

New Zealand universities, including the University of Otago, may soon have to recruit significantly more academic staff annually than they do now as rolls grow and their ageing workforces rapidly retire.

A report commissioned by Universities New Zealand, the body representing this country's eight universities, estimated universities would need an extra 560 to 920 academic staff each year until 2020, depending on the rate of roll growth and how long older staff remained in the workforce. About 500 academic staff are recruited annually now.

Ensuring Otago had enough staff - and the right staff - would be a challenge, human resources director Kevin Seales said recently.

"We don't want to catastrophise it because it is not a critical issue right now, but we do need to be prepared, gearing up for it and thinking about it."

Mr Seales said human resource directors from around the country, who meet quarterly to discuss sector issues, had been concerned for some time about increasingly ageing academic workforces, quality staff being lured to the private sector and overseas institutions, and New Zealand's low academic salaries in relation to most overseas countries.

He chaired the four-member steering group which commissioned Business and Economic Research Ltd (Berl) to produce a snapshot of New Zealand's university academic workforce and what staffing levels might be required over the next 15 years.

Of Berl's 10 recommendations the committee had prioritised three, Mr Seales said - standardising workforce data and collecting statics annually; carrying out a detailed survey to understand more about why people chose an academic career or chose to leave one; and establishing a "one-stop shop" website advertising university vacancies throughout the country.

While the first two priorities had been endorsed by vice-chancellors, the third had not, he said.

"The vice-chancellors are lukewarm at the moment ... But we thought it was something we could do quite quickly to tangibly deliver results."

Mr Seales said he did not know how many older staff Otago had, as the information from each university used in the Berl report was kept confidential.

However, he said he expected the percentage of Otago's workforce over 50 would be as high, if not higher, than the national average.