In an attempt to prevent having to lay off faculty and staff during the recession, Hopkins' Human Resources (HR) department has volunteered its services to all University divisions to help improve efficiency and save money.
According to HR, the University will be taking additional measures in order to prevent future layoffs.
"The goal is to help department and/or divisional leaders eliminate redundancies, streamline workflow, ensure efficient organizations and do workforce planning for the future," wrote Vice President of Human Resources Charlene Moore Hayes in an e-mail to the News-Letter.
"We will assist them in efforts to assess the skills of existing staff and help to identify the skills they need to operate in a high performance setting. If we find a gap between the skills of the existing staff and those needed to make it a high performance work group, we will help to create staff development plans and/or help to identify new talent outside of the organization," she continued.
Hayes conceded that "there may be highly skilled, talented employees who find themselves without a job."
However, she wrote that the HR department will be willing to assist these displaced employees in finding work in different parts of the University.
"We are making a special effort to match people with valuable skills to positions across the University with a demand for those skills."
According to Hayes, many HR employees across Hopkins have been assembled to perform these assessments, which some University departments and divisions have already begun to request. In keeping with Hayes's vision of the project, there has not been substantial discussion of layoffs thus far.
"I haven't heard anything recently about such layoffs," Dean of Academic Advising Jim Fry said. He added that his impression from recent meetings and previous discussions on the topic is that if there are layoffs, "they won't come to Homewood campus and they are not imminent."
Fry said that since the month of April is beginning, there will be more meetings soon in which such topics could be covered, but that so far he has not "heard anything too scary."
The Hopkins registrar also does not predict any layoffs in the future.
"We do not anticipate any layoffs anytime soon, nor has there been any discussion about reorganizing the office such that layoffs would ensue," Registrar Mary Ellen Flaherty wrote in an e-mail to the News-Letter.
Bill Harrington, senior associate director of the Department of Athletics and Recreation, wrote in an e-mail that there will not be layoffs in athletics, even with the disbandment of the Hopkins crew team, and that no further teams are being cut.
The Hopkins School of Nursing has felt a push to be more efficient.
"We are trying very hard to look at the work we have to do and the way we do the work," School of Nursing Dean Martha Hill said.
Along with the rest of the University, the Nursing School has implemented a hiring freeze, and Hill said that they are now using HR's "new mechanism for strategic work analysis" in order to make sure that everything is "efficiently aligned" within the school and the system.
When asked about this "new mechanism" and the possibility of future layoffs, Hill said that she hoped to avoid the issue, that it was "too early to say" and that she was not sure yet if it would come up in the future. "We just don't know," she said.
Michael Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (JHSPH), admitted the possibility of layoffs happening in the next year.
"Over 80 percent of our budget is on external grants and contracts," he said.
"If individual grants and contracts are not renewed, then people have to be supported through other mechanisms. If other grants and contracts aren't available, then jobs are at risk."
However, he added, JHSPH is expecting external funding to go up next year, and no layoffs are planned as a result of budget limitations.
Many Hopkins divisions are implementing alternative methods to save funds in an attempt to prevent having to layoff employees.
"While FY 10 will be a very challenging year, it will not be necessary for SAIS to employ layoffs or furloughs," Myron Kunka, senior associate dean for Finance and Administration of the School of Advanced International Studies, said in a recent e-mail to the News-Letter.
"At SAIS we are undertaking a major review of all programmatic functional areas, organization structures and all our positions. As part of our Rolling Back The Future strategic plan, we are conducting business process reviews and reengineering efforts across the board to assure that we have the most effective, efficient and modern processes possible."
Lori Citti, director for Study Abroad, also wrote to the News-Letter that the office does not plan to lay off any personnel, but that they also will not be hiring any additional permanent staff.
According to Jeffrey Sharkey, director of Peabody, the Institute is taking several measures to help reduce costs.
"We closed our building over the winter holidays and saved $50,000 in reduced heating, security and staff time. We have not filled all vacant staff positions and are relying on greater productivity from all staff. We are increasing our attention to fundraising and organizing our council to be an even more effective fundraising body," he wrote in an e-mail to the News-Letter.
"We hope that layoffs will not have to occur and [we] will be looking to reduce hours where appropriate in the first instance."
