President Eddinger Talks Employee Recruitment and Retention Strategies in the Era of the Great Resignation with Inside Higher Ed and Qualtrics

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Wednesday, October 19, 2022 – Bunker Hill Community College President Pam Eddinger participated in a panel discussion sponsored by Inside Higher Ed and Qualtrics entitled “How the Great Resignation is Impacting Higher Education.”

As worker hiring and retention has become a top priority for institutions and companies globally, higher education has not been immune to current employment trends like the Great Resignation or Quiet Quitting. Media company Inside Higher Ed and data analytics firm Qualtrics partnered to offer this webinar to help colleges and universities to navigate the complexities of these issues. At center: when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent, listening, understanding and acting on employee feedback has never been more critical. 

As a recognized leader in community college education, Bunker Hill Community College has seen position vacancies and turnover in line with its sector of the last few years. President Eddinger, along with fellow panelists Kevin McClure (University of North Carolina at Wilmington), Veronica Sills (North Carolina A&F University), Brittani MacLeod (Korn Ferry), and Katie Johnson (Qualtrics) helped to shed light on these trends and offer strategies for improving hiring and retention across the higher education spectrum. 

"All of these elements that we struggle with existed before COVID,” said Eddinger. “COVID refocused us on the needs of our students and it spilled over to the needs of employees...When you're on a Zoom and they're teaching with your children in the background, it's a very similar experience to what our students have...I think it amped up our empathy in a way like never before...We've embraced telework, and we're getting the same or better productivity. We think of higher education as being very traditional, well, If we don't break out of [tradition], we're going to lose people." 

The webinar is available free on the Inside Higher Ed website.