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Critical Hire End

Monday, August 23, 2021

Administrative Memo sent Monday, August 23

 

END OF CRITICAL HIRE PROCESS

 

Please share the information below with hiring authorities in your unit.

 

Late Friday afternoon, all USG Presidents received the attached notice from the USG that the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget (OPB) announced that the Strategic Hire Process, known as Critical Hire for USG, will no longer be required. In response to OPB’s announcement, USG immediately discontinued the USG Critical Hire process.

 

Any units with positions currently submitted for review to the USG through the Critical Hire process may proceed with their recruitment processes without additional approvals by UGA or USG. University Human Resources (UHR) will send formal approvals of the pending positions to finalize and close out the critical hire process for those positions. We greatly appreciate the time, effort, and thoughtfulness that you and your respective teams have invested in this process over the past 20 months.

 

While the USG Critical Hire process has ended and Presidential and USG approvals are no longer required, please keep in mind the purpose of this process was to help ensure institutions would strategically evaluate their workforce needs to meet System-wide and institutional goals and objectives in service of our core teaching, research, outreach, and student-support missions. To continue the strategic evaluation of new hires, authority to post new hires is now delegated to the respective vice presidents and deans as follows:

  • Any faculty and post-doc new hires that have an expected salary of more than $80,000 (increased from $40,000 under the Critical Hire process) must be reviewed and approved by the dean of the school/college or the respective unit vice president before the position can be posted in UGAJobs.
    • Deans are authorized to post and fill vacant tenure-track faculty positions that are consistent with the annual memorandum submitted previously to the Provost outlining their faculty hiring plans for the upcoming academic year.  
  • Any staff positions (new or replacement) that have an expected salary of more than $80,000 (increased from $40,000 under the Critical Hire process) must be reviewed and approved by deans of the schools/colleges or vice presidents for the divisions.
  • Any new or replacement position, regardless of salary level, should be carefully reevaluated to determine long-term strategic fit and focus within the unit.
  • The authority being delegated to the vice presidents and deans may not be further delegated.

 

Position reclassifications will follow the regular internal review and approval process established by UHR and will not require any USG critical hire review and approval processing. However, the USG’s Advanced Salary Increase request and approval process still applies (https://www.usg.edu/hr/assets/hr/hrap_manual/HRAP_Salary_Increase_Administration_Process_Classification%2C_Compensation%2C_and_Payroll.pdf).

 

Faculty Affairs and UHR will provide additional information as needed. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact Vice Provost Marisa Pagnattaro (pagnatta@uga.edu) for questions related to new faculty or post-doc hires, or Associate Vice President Juan Jarrett (jarrettj@uga.edu) for questions related to new staff hires.

 

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Administrative Memos are coordinated through the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. For more information, contact Sam Fahmy at sfahmy@uga.edu.