The numbers are in and 295 bi-weekly paid employees have accepted the University's early retirement incentive, Vice President for Human Resources Kyle Cavanaugh said.
Duke offered a "defined benefit"-or pension--plan to 825 staff members who have worked at the University for at least 10 years and are at least 50 years old. Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said the University hoped 20 percent of eligible staff members would accept the plan-about 35 percent actually did.
University officials said early projections of the acceptance rate estimate Duke will save about $10 to $20 million in salaries, benefits and equipment.
"Two hundred [people accepting the plan] was just a guess as to how many we might get, the target was as many as we could get," Trask said. "Three hundred surprised me but not outrageously so, what surprised me was the number of people who thanked me for giving them the opportunity to do this. We've been working really hard... I think people are surprised how well we've been able to handle this so far."
Cavanaugh said he attributes the high acceptance rate to retirees being close to retirement age and already considering retirement as well as the predictability of the pension plan-a structured formula that allows retirees to calculate almost exactly what their payouts will be. He added that availability of retiree health insurance may also have boosted the acceptance rate. Cavanaugh said 96 percent of all staff members eligible for the incentive also qualified for the University's retiree health insurance.
The University hopes to leave most of the vacated positions empty when staff members leave their posts Aug. 31, but some positions will have to be filled, Cavanaugh said. Whenever possible, Duke will look to internally promote employees. But Cavanaugh said the need for replacements, internal or external, will be evaluated by either Provost Peter Lange or Trask.
Some newly vacated positions will have to be refilled and have already been approved by Lange or Trask. Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, will lose his executive secretary, Virginia Skinner, to the incentive. He said he will not consider hiring a new secretary from outside the University.
"Any time people with deep institutional knowledge and strong commitment to the university leave, it's a loss and you very much have to look to rebuild it," he said. "But at the same time, we have a lot of talented people around here and those openings are opportunities for people to move up."
The goal of University officials is to fill as few positions as possible, Cavanaugh said, and many departments losing staff they will not be able to replace are working to increase efficiency so that operations and services continue at a normal level.
Still, cutbacks will cause changes around Duke, Trask said.
"Something has to suffer. There's no free lunch here, something has to give," Trask said. "One of the things we're trying to do is pull from areas that aren't going to cause a lot of damage."
Departments from the Duke University Police Department to Human Resources will need to restructure around losing staff members. HR is losing three positions at the end of August and they will not be replaced, Cavanaugh said.
DUPD, however, had five police officers and 13 security officers accept the incentive. DUPD Chief John Dailey wrote in an e-mail that openings for the five officer positions and four of the security positions have already been posted and are accepting applications.
"I think people realize that police and security is pretty critical to the University's function, and the administration has been very supportive [of filling positions]," Dailey said in an interview. "We are trying to fill them as quickly as we can, we have a process to do this, we're expediting everything... Our priority is patrol, being visible and responding to calls, and if there are administrative functions that have to be put on hold. or if we don't need to write as many parking tickets to make sure people are safe then that's what we'll do."
He added that in the current state of the economy there are many high-quality candidates and now is a good time for DUPD to look to hire.
But Trask wrote in an e-mail that he has only approved the replacement of police officers and one security officer so they could start looking for qualified candidates. He said University officials haven't yet agreed as to how many security jobs they can fill, if any, adding that he wants to try to reorganize the security officer positions.
"I want to be attentive to campus safety issues, and I think the number of [police] officers on the ground is an important number. I think it's more important than the number of security officers," he said.
Although Trask expects to save $20 million through this initiative, the University's goal for the year is to cut $50 million from the budget. Trask said officials are still discussing a retirement incentive for monthly salaried employees, which he said would be announced in September or October. Still, he said he does not expect that incentive to draw a large acceptance rate and hopes that natural attrition numbers will help eliminate positions as well.
The attrition rate is down to 8 percent from 15 percent, Trask said, adding that the University needs to be careful not to automatically replace vacancies that occur "for natural reasons." He estimated that through incentives and natural turnover the University would eliminate about 1,000 people and that Duke is already almost halfway there.
"Obviously the vast majority [of naturally vacated positions] are going to have to be replaced but I'd rather lose jobs that way than have to implement some kind of layoff," Trask said. "But I'm still optimistic, I think we'll get this done."
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