Transitioning to a Hiring Freeze

We are thankful for everyone’s engagement with our efforts to balance the budget while continuing to pursue our strategic objectives as an institution. Thank you to those who joined us for the Operating Budget Town Hall, and to those who have made suggestions in response to our request for input. We continue to welcome your ideas through the budget inbox and if you weren’t able to join us for the town hall, you can watch the recording on the Operating Budget Town Hall webpage. The transcript and Q&A will be posted to that page shortly.

As President Goel recently communicated, the University is implementing new measures to aid financial sustainability. Over the last year, we have been operating within a limited hiring program focused on realigning and finding efficiencies instead of automatically hiring when roles become vacant. However, effective immediately, the University is implementing a hiring freeze which means that all hiring for faculty and staff positions must stop now with very limited exceptions.

Externally funded positions will be exempt from the hiring freeze.

There will continue to be careful review of required positions for ancillary services and positions funded through student fees.

Requests for Exceptions

The University’s circumstances demand that only rare exceptions to the hiring freeze be considered for faculty and staff positions after following a stringent review process.

Faculty Process

Requests to advertise a faculty position at any rank will continue to need to be submitted by the Dean to the Associate Vice-President, Faculty Planning and Policy. The request will be reviewed by a cross-institutional working group of senior academic leaders before making a recommendation to the Vice-President, Academic and Provost.

Staff Process

If the department’s hiring manager deems a vacant role essential to fulfilling critical operations at the University, and no alternative can be found, they can contact their HR Partner to discuss making an exception request.

If after that discussion an exception request could be considered, hiring managers must submit the request to their Executive Council member, who will bring it to their unit’s Vice-President for consideration.

If the unit’s Vice-President supports the case, the request will then move to a cross-institutional, cross-functional working group for their review before it is submitted to the Vice-President, Academic and Provost and the Vice-President, Administration and Finance for their consideration.

The following circumstances now require an exception request to the hiring freeze:

• Filling a vacant position
• Creating a net new position (either temporary or permanent)
• Moving a contract position to a permanent position
• Repurposing an existing position
• Increasing the base salary for a current employee (e.g., stipend or re-classifications)
• Replacing employees on leave (e.g., pregnancy, parental, sickness absence, or other types of leaves)
• Extending a current temporary contract or backfilling an existing temporary contract

Although we are pursuing all available opportunities to address our deficit, given the proportion of the University’s expenses that are salaries and benefits, this hiring freeze is a prudent and necessary measure at this time.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to the University. If you have any questions or would like to begin the process for an exception request, please contact your HR Partner.

We recognize that the content of this email may be unsettling. If you are affected by this message, we encourage you to reach out for support at the Employee and Family Assistance Program (for employees), Counselling Services (for students) and 211Ontario (for people with no affiliation to the University).