Pillar III – Enhancing the University’s Status as an Employer of Choice

The University of Arkansas is committed to fostering a work environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging, works toward a meaningful purpose, and has the data, resources, connections and foundation of support to be most effective, grow and advance their careers, and thrive in their personal and professional lives. This will be accomplished when we:

Strategic Plan Homepage

Attract and match the best talent to the right roles at the right time, through proactive outreach and offers candidates a top-notch hiring experience to meet the evolving needs of candidates, employees, the university and its units.
Engage and retain faculty and staff by helping them fulfill their career aspirations and caring for their well-being.
Strengthen university’s land-grant mission through a high-performance culture that drives results and continuous improvement.

Key Initiatives

All Employees

Classification and Compensation Projects

Planned Underway Implemented

By making a significant investment in compensation and resources, the university better positions itself to attract, develop and retain faculty and staff while enhancing its status as an Employer of Choice.

All Employees

Adopting an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Planned Underway Implemented

An EVP defines the unique value the university offers in exchange for the talent, contributions and commitment of its employees.

Staff

Enhacing Employee Onboarding

Planned Underway Implemented

Creating a great experience that retains employees from day 1 is essential to the university's reputation as an employer of choice.

Staff

Full Service Talent Acqusition

Planned Underway Implemented

Standardizing our recruiting practices, building an employer brand, and building our sourcing capabilities is essential to attracting qualified talent.

All Employees

Acting on Employee Feedback

Planned Underway Implemented

Listening is only the start when being an employer of choice. Building robust feedback programs and taking action from the results of those programs is essential.

Staff

Supporting Career Pathways

Planned Underway Implemented

Adding visibility, support, and ownership to career development within the university supports retention and employee engagement.

The university announced the beginning of its Staff Classification and Compensation Project in 2022. The project aimed to develop, implement and administer a more consistent and transparent job and compensation architecture, along with associated pay practices. In addition to this project, Faculty and Graduate Assistant Compensation projects were later launched in 2023 to analyze market and peer institution compensation. These inital projects resulted in millions of dollars invested into our people by July 2025.

Key Areas of Focus

Job Architecture: Establishes a clear, consistent job structure that defines roles, career levels and job families across the university. This created shared standards and processes to support responsible decision-making across units.

Pay Equity and Fairness: Aligns compensation practices to promote internal equity, address inconsistencies and support compliance.

Market Alignment: Uses external market data to ensure compensation remains competitive and responsive to workforce needs.

Key Areas of Focus

EVP Survey: All employees were sent the EVP survey (distributed in English and Spanish) in 2025 and had approximately two weeks to complete the questionnaire. Over 1000 employees participated giving us the first responses of a more robust employee feedback program being developed.

EVP Statement: Using both quantitative and qualitative responses, Human Resources is developing an EVP statement that accurately reflects the sentiments of our faculty and staff. Stakeholder feedback will be essential in evaluating the statement and refining it.

Supporting Benefits: The EVP data and statement have provided essential data on the most important attraction features of the university segmented by audiences like job families. This data also provided the foundation for many initiatives like the full service talent acquisition program, employee testimonial program, and employee engagement survey.

Key Areas of Focus

The Office of Human Resources redesigned New Employee Orientation for a more structured, engaging orientation experience that introduces employees to campus culture, resources, and expectations.

New Employee networking events, one per semester, were introduced to encourage relationship building across departments. Each new employee will be able to attend 3 events in their first year.

New Employees now receive check-in messages from the onboarding team at important milestones in the first year, including at 30, 60, and 90 days and sixth and twelve months of employment. These messages recognize employees career milestones at the university while also highlighting resources they may need.

Virtual employee resources fairs held in the Fall and Spring semesters provide dedicated time for new hires to connect with the many support departments that exsist across the university.

Beginning in 2024, Staff recruiting at the university began to be centralized under the Office of Human Resources Talent Acqusition team. This dedicated team has continued to pilot and expand that program to multiple areas including Student Affairs, Facilities Management, and Transit and Parking. Departments interested in participating in the expanded pilot program should reach out to Terri Chadick, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, Policy and Ethics. Highlights of this new talent acquisition model are included below:

Key Areas of Focus

Recruiters are now assigned from inital request, to sourcing, dispositioning applicants, and final offer. This ensures the process continues to move forward, gives hiring managers dedicated support, and supports an improved applicant experience.

The university has invested in developing its employer brand. This is the visual, written, and placement of how the institution promotes itself as an employer. With a redesigned jobs website, a dedicated campus specific careers portal, and a focus on our digital footprint (UARK Jobs Social Media, Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, etc...), the university has begun to flesh out its full employer brand.

Moving from passive recruiting (posting and waiting for applicants) to active recruiting (targeted sourcing by recruiters for open roles) had led to improvements in number and quality of applicants and a decrease in time to fill. Through the use of new tools like LinkedIn Recruiter and recruitment marketing campaigns, the university is modernizing its sourcing practices.

While soliciting employee feedback isn't new to the University, many of the programs like the Staff Climate Survey were no longer running. Beginning in 2025, university leaders initatied a revival of our employee feedback mechanisms to better understand how we can continue to support employees after the launch of the Classification and Compensation projects. These initatives were meant to provide quality data on improving the university's reputation as an employer of choice.

Key Areas of Focus

Employee Engagement Survey: A recurring survey sent to all employees focused on employee engagement, not satisfaction, and the drivers behind it. The inital survey launched in Fall 2025, with results and action planning taking place in Spring 2026.

COACHE Faculty Survey: the Office of the Provost offers faculty the opportunity to provide feedback related to job satisfaction through the COACHE survey. This survey is conducted as part of a national research program called the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, which is operated by the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Action Planning: University leaders are committed to utilizing feedback mechanisms to take action on improving the employee experience. These efforts are owned at the unit level based on segmented feedback for each area, which allows for targeted enhancements instead of one-size fits all approaches.

Employee Tuition Waivers

Up to 90% U of A tuition waivers for employees and 50% for family members

Consistently ranked as one of the BEST EMPLOYERS IN ARKANSAS

Forbes and Statista

Fayetteville ranked as one of the BEST PLACES TO LIVE IN THE U.S.

U.S. News & World Report