An arts and science college has several departments, a mix of aided and self-financed posts, and a large share of guest or part-time lecturers. The people issues are about fairness between posts and keeping records straight.
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Share your requirementsAn arts and science college runs departments in languages, commerce, history, mathematics, physics, chemistry and life sciences, with large classes and a timetable that fits several programmes together. Staff may be on aided posts, self-financed posts or paid by the hour as guest lecturers, and these groups sit side by side with very different pay and security. Non-teaching staff include office assistants, lab attendants, library staff and hostel workers. The college may have students across several languages and streams. The wider education hub covers what institutions share.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in arts and science colleges. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Aided, self-financed and guest lecturers do similar work on different terms, and the difference is felt daily.
Departments depend on part-time teachers who work in several colleges and may leave when a better slot opens.
Language and commerce departments carry large batches while others have small classes, and sharing is rarely discussed.
Appointment, leave and service details sit in handwritten registers that only one clerk understands.
Clerks and attendants learn on the job and seldom see a training plan or a career step.
Forms are filled to meet a requirement, and teachers do not see any link to growth.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Policies, Compliance and Governance; Employee Administration; Employee Relations. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for education, not in general.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a arts and science colleges business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Aided, self-financed and guest: the terms, hours and what each can expect, shared openly.
Aided, self-financed and guest: the terms, hours and what each can expect, shared openly. The HR policies and governance work sets the form.
Terms, payment day, a named contact and a yearly conversation to keep good part-time teachers.
Terms, payment day, a named contact and a yearly conversation to keep good part-time teachers.
Count hours, batch sizes and extra duties, and discuss how to share them.
Count hours, batch sizes and extra duties, and discuss how to share them.
A properly indexed file or sheet for each employee, maintained by a trained clerk.
A properly indexed file or sheet for each employee, maintained by a trained clerk. See employee information management.
Short training on office work, record keeping and student service, with a path for growth.
Short training on office work, record keeping and student service, with a path for growth.
A short form with a talk about teaching and a development step, led by the head of department.
A short form with a talk about teaching and a development step, led by the head of department.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Clear, shared terms for aided, self-financed and guest posts.
Staff records that are indexed, complete and not held in one clerk's memory.
Appraisal that links to development, not just to a form.
A proper start for new teachers and clerks, including guest lecturers.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in education, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Faculty, administrative and support staff leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it within the academic calendar.
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How an India head can sort a global parent's HR policies into apply, adapt or replace, write an India addendum with advisers, and keep headquarters on side.
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Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Pay on a fixed date, give them a clear timetable early and hold a yearly conversation about their plans. Some guest teachers move for reliability more than for the rate itself.
Their terms differ, so not entirely, but processes can be common: induction, appraisal, grievance handling and development. Fairness in treatment matters even where pay and security are different.
Appointment details, subjects taught, leave, training and appraisals for every employee, in a standard format. Use an index so that any record can be found without asking one particular person.
Define the tasks, train them on office routines and student service, and give feedback. A clerk who knows what is expected and has a path to a better post will work better.
Count hours and batch sizes in one way, and discuss the figures with heads of department. Adjust allocation or support where one department carries far more than others.
We would first count staff by type and department, ask a guest lecturer about their experience and see who can find a service record. A set of plain notes on each type of post and an indexed staff record are usual first jobs, scoped in writing.
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