13 ways to support new faculty to ensure a successful semester

Despite many challenges in higher education, many institutions remain steadfast in their missions to provide the highest quality education. Faculty are at the heart of this goal, and retaining high-quality teaching staff is essential for institutional effectiveness. Effective retention begins with new faculty success.

Traditionally, new faculty members worked through their first semesters by themselves. However, as institutions emphasize retention, they proactively ensure new faculty have a successful first year. An accommodating and welcoming environment helps you build a connection with faculty and set them up for success.

The challenges of new faculty retention

As a higher education institution, your primary goal is to make a difference in students’ lives — every new faculty member can help you achieve this. However, attracting and retaining top faculty is a challenge for many. The role of higher education is becoming more significant, creating a highly competitive landscape. High faculty turnover leads to many adverse outcomes, including wasted resources spent on recruitment, lost productivity, and student dissatisfaction. In addition, your institution may take a reputational knock if faculty move on often.

The first step is understanding faculty retention challenges, which include:

Workload and compensation: Balancing the workload and compensation of new faculty is challenging. New faculty members perform multiple roles, including research, service, administration, and outreach. Multitasking can lead to burnout and high turnover, especially if their compensation does not reflect their contributions.
Overwhelming one-time orientation: A significant amount of information in one day can impact the first semester of teaching. Faculty who must simultaneously balance class management, assessments, and teaching may encounter challenges navigating various aspects of their positions. Over time, they become dissatisfied and look for alternative employment.
Less focus on diversity and inclusion: Creating a diverse and inclusive academic community is a significant challenge for many institutions. They encounter challenges recruiting from underrepresented groups due to lack of support, marginalization, and limited career advancement opportunities.
Unclear career pathways: New faculty members want to know how their careers will progress. Institutions that fail to offer clear pathways, support, and guidance to faculty may lose out to those with clear career development and mobility strategies.
Identifying institutional goals during recruitment: Finding faculty that align with institutional values is another significant challenge. Those with different values will likely become dissatisfied and move on to other institutions. Be clear about your institutional values during recruitment to attract candidates with similar goals.

The importance of supporting new faculty members

In light of the significant challenges in retention, knowing how to support new faculty is more crucial than ever. Some of the benefits of a faculty support strategy include:

Boosted faculty satisfaction: When faculty feel supported from the outset, they feel more connected and have a greater sense of community. They also feel the administration understands, acknowledges, and engages them, leading to greater overall satisfaction.
Improved faculty retention: Investing in faculty support and supporting their growth increases morale and loyalty, which means a better retention rate. Employees who feel valued are 45 percent less likely to change jobs within two years. They remain committed to your institution, reducing the costs and disruptions associated with high turnover.
Better teaching quality and productivity: Supporting and engaging your faculty can help them engage more in the classroom. They’ll be less burnt out and more focused, leading to better teaching quality and enhanced student outcomes.

13 strategies to support new faculty

A proactive approach to faculty support brings lasting results for your institution and students. With the proper backup, faculty bring fresh ideas and new perspectives to teaching and research. They engage their students and connect with their peers, contributing to a cohesive campus culture. Here are 13 ways to support your faculty at the beginning to ensure a successful semester.

1. Foster a positive community and culture

When newly hired faculty members enter your institution, they should feel part of your institution’s culture. To achieve this goal, you must foster a positive culture that welcomes them from the outset. Some steps you can take to build your culture and share it with faculty include:

Create a welcoming environment: Your administration should be open and welcoming, making the new hire feel part of the family. Focus on organization and enlist veteran faculty members to show the new employee the ropes.
Share your vision: Communicate your vision clearly and consistently to encourage faculty to align with your goals and values. Demonstrate how your values inform your decisions and how they reflect each faculty member’s needs and interests.
Start with open and transparent communication: Establish multiple mechanisms for faculty to air their concerns and orient new hires with these processes as soon as possible.

2. Outline institutional values and expectations

New hires in any profession will automatically perform better if they understand the employee’s expectations. Make your values clear on a cultural level, and again, demonstrate how these values protect and support facility members. Faculty need clear objectives to examine their performance, understand where they excel, and identify improvement opportunities.

Leverage data on faculty performance to ensure a fair and transparent process for analyzing whether faculty meet your expectations. Discuss roles, responsibilities, and performance metrics during onboarding so faculty understand their teaching and research loads.

3. Focus on important behavioral tasks

The last thing you want to do is overwhelm your faculty from the moment they walk through the door. Although they need to understand roles and responsibilities, providing too much information about their responsibilities can be counterproductive. Instead, encourage new faculty members to focus on immediate duties during the first semester to lay a solid foundation for success. Consider the following strategies:

Just-in-time resources: Stagger the information and resources you provide to allow faculty to focus on the basics as they acclimatize to their new environment.
Regular meetings: Establish regular meetings with faculty to address immediate concerns and provide guidance on their responsibilities.
Clear messaging: Keep your communications clear and concise to avoid information overload.
Administrative support: Assign administrative staff to help new faculty with logistical tasks, allowing them to focus on their core roles until they’re settled into a routine.

4. Provide resources and onboarding guides during orientation

Onboarding is an opportunity to make a positive impression on new faculty and demonstrate your support. A relaxing, informal tour of your campus is often a good place to start. Some steps to get maximum value from onboarding and orientation include:

Personalize the experience: Every faculty member is different, and they may have different roles and responsibilities. Customize the onboarding experience to meet the needs and expectations of each faculty member and their position. This approach demonstrates that you value each new hire as an individual.
Start early: Successful onboarding begins before the new hire’s first day. Complete any paperwork and ensure the faculty member can access your systems before they start. Send a welcoming email to provide essential information, including an overview of your culture and values.
Highlight policies and procedures: Familiarize new faculty with important policies, particularly those related to ethics and safety.

5. Offer professional development opportunities

One of the first things many new faculty members want is how you’ll support their professional development. Invest in personal development to show faculty you care about their growth, aspirations, and career success. Provide new faculty access to conferences, workshops, and training sessions and encourage them to take advantage of these. Some tips for effective professional development include:

Create career pathways: A career pathway is a comprehensive overview of stages and milestones to achieve before advancing a career. It establishes clear expectations and allows faculty to visualize their long-term career trajectories, which can boost retention.
Align with faculty goals: There should be a clear link between professional development and each member’s personal and professional goals. To keep them engaged, align these opportunities with the faculty’s interests, needs, and expectations.
Provide incentives: Incentives and resources make faculty professional development more straightforward and engaging. You can also provide time for faculty to engage in these activities and make new faculty aware of these benefits from the start.

6. Create mentorship programs

Many successful faculty members have mentors who guide and help them overcome challenges. Assigning mentors to new faculty can help them connect with their colleagues and feel a sense of belonging. Assign mentors who work with the same students in the same department to help monitor progress and provide unique feedback to your new hires.

7. Prioritize flexibility in work arrangements

Work-life balance is one of the most critical elements of a thriving workforce. Supportive policies and practices are essential to maintaining positive relationships with your new faculty. Flexibility in scheduling, online classes, and on-campus services like child care and wellness programs can improve their well-being.

8. Showcase a climate of trust and autonomy

Show your trust in faculty by encouraging them to use their best judgment and expertise. Every faculty member brings a unique perspective to your institution, and the whole campus benefits when they can freely share their knowledge.

Model the behaviors you expect from your faculty, like transparency, autonomy, and taking responsibility for your decisions. Admit errors, ask for help, and offer support when needed, setting the tone and standard for your institution. Encourage dialogue among your faculty and create a safe and open environment for communication. Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities and clarify to your faculty that they are licensed to experiment within reason.

9. Implement a recognition and rewards system

Studies show that rewarded faculty members maintain their positions in their existing networks and gain more visibility in wider networks. Recognition and rewards signal your appreciation and respect for your faculty’s contributions. These systems can also enhance faculty satisfaction, engagement, and retention while aligning incentives with institutional priorities and expectations.

Consider how best to incentivize your faculty depending on their work’s level, scope, and impact. You can present formal awards or integrate monetary incentives to keep them engaged in their work and professional development. Have set criteria for selecting and evaluating faculty and ensure the process is transparent.

10. Institute a faculty learning community (FLC)

An FLC is a peer-led group of faculty members engaging in a collaborative program that encourages encouragement and support throughout the academic year. Your new faculty can engage with educational content, share perspectives, and create connections with their colleagues. This community must be a safe space so that faculty feel safe sharing their views and ideas.

11. Improve the classroom experience

It’s natural for faculty to experience challenges in the classroom, but new or inexperienced hires may still need to develop the skills to handle them. You can set them up for success with the following strategies:

Help them prepare: Supply new faculty with the necessary resources to prepare for the school year. Make yourself available to answer questions and provide support as they prepare for this new environment.
Provide a dedicated workspace: Empower your new hires to make their workspace their own and make resources available to accomplish this goal.
Respond to queries immediately: If your faculty experiences classroom challenges, keep lines of communication open throughout the year. Make their work meaningful and show them the results of their work with student success data and positive feedback.

12. Integrate a faculty feedback system

The people in the best position to report on the faculty experience are your faculty. Create an effective faculty feedback system with the following steps:

Identify your goals: Clarify what you want to achieve with your feedback system, focusing on measuring the faculty experience. Once you have a clear goal, you can craft questions that serve as a source of maximum insight from your faculty.
Choose your tools: Many methods and tools, including surveys, interviews, and data, are available to collect and analyze feedback. Choose tools that suit your goals and make responding as easy for faculty as possible.
Analyze and interpret your data: Once you have gathered faculty feedback data, you can use purpose-built software solutions to organize, summarize, and visualize the data. Look for patterns and trends in your data that reveal improvement opportunities so that you can continuously improve faculty support.

13. Monitor and update faculty support strategies

Your faculty’s needs will change throughout their careers, so your support strategy must evolve. Monitor new faculty as they progress at your institution with the following tips:

Adopt a collaborative approach: Involve your faculty in discussing your support strategies to prioritize voices from different backgrounds.
Develop and revise action plans: Use faculty feedback and data to develop specific, actionable plans to boost faculty support as their needs change.
Observe your progress: Schedule periods meetings to assess your new strategies and create a system for ongoing feedback to encourage faculty to share their observations.
Review outcomes: At the semester’s end, evaluate your strategies’ effectiveness against the defined key performance indicators (KPIs).

Implement Watermark Faculty Success to support new faculty members

A supported and engaged faculty improves retention, creates a positive institutional culture, and boosts student learning outcomes. Taking a proactive approach to faculty support is essential, and with Watermark Faculty Success, you have crucial data at your fingertips. This centralized hub for faculty activity gives you actionable insights into faculty contributions so you can better support their career growth.

Gather insights across your campus and give your faculty the tools to save time and focus on their core competencies. Support your faculty from day one and request a demo of our solutions today!