Employee Retention, Student Success, Leadership Accountability, and the Work Between Departments
By Dr. Matthew Rosenboom | Rosenboom Workforce Institute
Higher education is confronting a remarkable collection of challenges.
Enrollment pressures. Student retention. Employee turnover. Financial constraints. Declining trust. Increasing expectations for accountability. Departments being asked to accomplish more with fewer resources.
We often discuss these challenges as though they are separate problems requiring separate solutions.
Student retention belongs to Student Affairs. Employee turnover belongs to Human Resources. Financial pressures belong to the Business Office. Enrollment belongs to Admissions. Organizational culture belongs to senior leadership.
But what if our tendency to separate these challenges is actually part of the problem?
What if many of the difficulties facing higher education are connected by something we have consistently underestimated?
The employee experience—and the institutional environment in which employees are expected to serve students.
I believe there are five questions higher education leaders should be asking more frequently.
1. Do We Have an Employee Retention Problem—or a Leadership Accountability Problem?
When employees leave an institution, we often hear familiar explanations.
Compensation is not competitive. Employees have different expectations. The labor market has changed. People simply do not demonstrate the same loyalty they once did.
Sometimes these explanations are entirely legitimate.
But how often do we examine what employees experienced before deciding to leave?
Were their concerns heard? Did they receive the resources necessary to perform their responsibilities? Were expectations reasonable and clearly communicated? Did supervisors provide meaningful support? Were employees included in decisions affecting their work?
Employee turnover is not automatically evidence of poor leadership. But neither should leadership be excluded from the examination.
A particularly uncomfortable question is whether institutions sometimes spend more time explaining why employees leave than understanding why they no longer want to stay.
Leadership accountability should include responsibility for the working conditions that influence employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
2. What If Student Retention Begins With Employee Retention?
Higher education invests considerable attention and resources in improving the student experience.
We develop retention initiatives, early-alert systems, academic intervention programs, student engagement strategies, and increasingly sophisticated methods for identifying students at risk of leaving.
These are important efforts.
But consider the employee who is expected to deliver these services.
What happens when that employee is overwhelmed, inadequately trained, disengaged, or uncertain whether leadership will support their decisions?
What happens when departments experience constant turnover and students repeatedly encounter employees who are still learning their responsibilities?
And what happens when the people charged with encouraging students to remain at an institution are themselves considering leaving?
This does not mean every dissatisfied employee produces dissatisfied students, or that improving employee satisfaction automatically increases student retention.
The relationship is more complicated than that.
But it does suggest that employee experience deserves a more prominent place in conversations about institutional effectiveness.
A student's experience does not begin and end with institutional policies. It is shaped by the people responsible for implementing them.
If we want students to feel supported, perhaps we should examine how consistently we support the employees serving them.
3. Are We Actually Preparing Employees for the Responsibilities We Give Them?
Think about how many higher education employees begin new positions.
They complete employment paperwork. Receive access to institutional systems. Review policies. Meet colleagues. Attend orientation sessions.
And then, sometimes remarkably quickly, they are expected to demonstrate judgment in situations involving students, regulations, institutional procedures, competing priorities, and decisions with significant consequences.
We call this onboarding.
But is it really?
There is an important distinction between introducing someone to an organization and preparing that person to function effectively within it.
New employees need more than information.
They need opportunities to practice, ask questions, understand how their responsibilities connect with other departments, observe experienced colleagues, and receive constructive feedback.
They need supervisors who can explain not only what must be accomplished, but why certain decisions matter.
And they need sufficient time and support to develop professional confidence.
This is particularly important in higher education, where employees frequently encounter situations that cannot be resolved by following a checklist.
We should not confuse access to information with professional competence.
An institution that invests thoughtfully in onboarding is not simply helping new employees become productive. It is also developing the judgment, relationships, and institutional understanding necessary for effective service.
4. Is Higher Education's Greatest Operational Weakness the Space Between Departments?
Consider a hypothetical student who has a question involving Admissions, Financial Aid, the Registrar, and the Business Office.
Each department may understand its individual responsibilities.
Each employee may provide accurate information.
Each office may believe it has completed its part of the process.
Yet the student may still experience confusion, delays, conflicting expectations, or an unresolved problem.
How is that possible?
Because institutional processes do not always follow departmental boundaries.
Students experience an institution as one organization, even when we operate it as a collection of separate offices.
An effective handoff requires more than telling someone where to go next.
It requires clarity about who owns the next action, what information must be transferred, how completion will be confirmed, and who remains accountable when something goes wrong.
Too often, operational problems emerge not because employees are unwilling to help, but because institutional processes leave responsibility unclear.
And these gaps can create frustrations for employees as well as students.
The spaces between departments deserve the same attention we give to the performance of departments themselves.
When institutions improve coordination, they can reduce unnecessary rework, strengthen accountability, and make it easier for employees to serve students effectively.
5. What Happens When Employees Stop Telling Leadership Something Is Wrong?
This may be the most concerning question of all.
Most leaders recognize that persistent employee complaints can indicate organizational problems.
But what happens when the complaints stop?
Does silence mean employees are satisfied?
Possibly.
Or does it mean employees have concluded that speaking up will accomplish nothing?
There is an important difference between an organization where employees have few concerns and one where employees no longer believe expressing concerns is worthwhile.
An employee who raises a problem may still believe that improvement is possible.
An employee who withdraws from conversations, stops volunteering ideas, or quietly reduces discretionary effort may be communicating something equally important—without saying a word.
Of course, silence alone does not establish disengagement. Leaders should avoid assuming they understand employees' motives without asking.
But institutions that interpret fewer complaints as automatic evidence of improving organizational health risk overlooking problems that have simply become less visible.
The absence of complaints is not necessarily the presence of trust.
Leadership must create conditions where employees can communicate concerns respectfully, receive meaningful responses, and see that appropriate action follows when problems are identified.
Listening is important.
Demonstrating that listening matters may be even more important.
Five Questions. One Institutional Challenge.
Consider these five issues together.
Employee turnover can disrupt institutional continuity.
Weak onboarding can leave new employees uncertain about their responsibilities.
Poor cross-departmental coordination can increase employee frustration and create difficulties for students.
Disengagement can weaken communication, initiative, and willingness to identify problems.
And leadership practices can influence how employees experience all of these conditions.
These are not necessarily five independent institutional problems.
They may be different manifestations of deeper challenges involving organizational support, professional development, communication, trust, and accountability.
This is why I believe higher education needs to examine institutional effectiveness through a broader lens.
We cannot continue treating the employee experience and student experience as unrelated considerations.
The student experience cannot consistently outperform the institutional conditions supporting the employees responsible for delivering it.
Why I Have Been Developing a Growing Collection of Professional Workbooks
Over the past several months, I have been developing an expanding collection of practical higher education workbooks through the Rosenboom Workforce Institute.
Some focus on employee engagement, leadership, organizational trust, retention, and institutional culture.
Others address the operational responsibilities of individual departments, including Financial Aid, Admissions, the Registrar, Student Affairs, Career Services, and additional areas across higher education.
The It's Your First Day. Now What? series focuses specifically on helping new higher education professionals and their supervisors navigate the first 90 days of employment.
The Engaged Employees, Retained Students collection explores the relationship between workforce experiences and institutional functioning.
Other resources address warning signs preceding employee resignation, declining motivation, leadership trust, interdepartmental coordination, and the conversations that may influence an employee's or student's decision to remain.
Why develop so many resources?
Not because I believe a workbook can solve every institutional problem.
It cannot.
And certainly not because I believe my approaches represent the only acceptable way to address these challenges.
Every institution has its own mission, culture, resources, regulatory obligations, and operational realities.
Rather, my goal is to make practical professional-development resources available to employees, supervisors, and institutional leaders who recognize these challenges but may be uncertain where to begin.
Sometimes an institution does not need another elaborate initiative.
Sometimes a supervisor needs a better conversation.
A new employee needs a more structured learning experience.
A department needs a practical exercise that helps colleagues recognize where communication is breaking down.
Or a leadership team needs a framework for asking questions it has not previously considered.
These workbooks are intended to support those kinds of efforts.
They include reflection questions, practical exercises, case studies, facilitated discussions, and opportunities to examine existing practices and consider alternatives.
They are resources to work with—not prescriptions to follow blindly.
The Point Is Not Simply to Sell More Books
I recognize that publishing a growing collection of workbooks naturally creates a commercial element.
But I want to be clear about the larger purpose.
I am not suggesting that purchasing a workbook is the solution to higher education's institutional challenges.
My interest is in making useful resources available to professionals who want to strengthen their departments, support their employees, and improve the experiences of the students they serve.
If a workbook helps a supervisor approach an employee conversation differently, that matters.
If it helps a new employee navigate a difficult situation with greater confidence, that matters.
If it encourages a department to examine a recurring handoff problem, that matters.
And if it helps institutional leaders recognize the connection between employee experiences and organizational outcomes, that matters too.
The resources are available for those who find them useful. Institutions can adapt the ideas to their own circumstances, and I welcome professional discussion about approaches that work, those that do not, and opportunities for improvement.
A Final Question for Higher Education Leaders
We spend considerable time asking what our institutions need from employees.
Greater productivity. Better student service. Stronger collaboration. More accountability. Improved retention.
Perhaps we need to become equally committed to asking another question:
What do our employees need from our institutions to accomplish those things successfully?
That question deserves more than an annual survey or a discussion during a leadership retreat.
It deserves sustained attention.
Because institutional effectiveness is not simply about the programs we offer, the policies we establish, or the goals we announce.
It is also about the people entrusted with making those commitments meaningful.
And if we want better outcomes for students, we should be willing to examine the organizational conditions experienced by the people responsible for supporting them.
I'd welcome your perspective: Which of these five challenges deserves the most urgent attention at your institution—and what have you seen actually make a difference?
For those interested in exploring the growing collection of practical workbooks and professional-development resources from the Rosenboom Workforce Institute, the collection is available here:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rosenboomworkforceinstitute
Dr. Matthew Rosenboom
Rosenboom Workforce Institute
#HigherEducation #Leadership #EmployeeEngagement #StudentSuccess #EmployeeRetention #OrganizationalCulture #ProfessionalDevelopment #InstitutionalEffectiveness