UI considering early employee retirement as part of efficiency opportunities

The University of Iowa 'absolutely” will consider offering early retirement to employees as part of a Board of Regents plan to cut costs at Iowa's public universities.

During a discussion with members of the media Tuesday, UI President Sally Mason said the university likely will use as a template the early retirement incentive package it made available to employees in 2009 as part of budget cuts.

'We did that during the recession, and we did it very successfully,” Mason said. 'We were able to avoid laying off people, and we were able to avoid furloughing people when the budgets got very very tight very quickly.”

About 600 UI employees applied for the early retirement package in 2009, exceeding savings expectations, according to Board of Regents documents. About 60 percent of the applicants worked for UI Health Care, including the UI Hospitals and Clinics and Carver College of Medicine.

The minimum age for eligibility for the 2009 package was 57.

'What we put in place was a very reasonable way to allow people to leave the university and still feel good about the university and good about their employment here,” Mason said. 'That's one of my goals - to make sure that we have those kinds of opportunities going forward.”

Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa also offered early retirement programs in 2009. Officials from those institutions have not said whether they plan to do so again as part of the efficiency review.

The Board of Regents in March hired Deloitte Consulting LLC to conduct an efficiency review of the regents system and its campuses. Consultants identified 175 possibilities for improving efficiency, bettering customer service or cutting costs.

Of those opportunities, Deloitte identified 17 of the most promising and presented details on 12 of them to the Board of Regents. The board approved moving forward with those opportunities, which are expected to save tens of millions of dollars and eliminate hundreds of jobs across the campuses.

The board is planning to seek help from outside consultants on some aspects of implementation, but last week it also gave the university presidents the go-ahead to develop their own plans to implement suggested improvements.

All three university heads expressed interest in doing so, and on Tuesday Mason said she has teams in place to devise ways to move on the recommended changes without a consultant.

'We want to be a part of this conversation to make certain that if we have some good ideas, they are on the table,” Mason said. 'If we are able to manage some of these at a lower cost, we want to do that.”

The university presidents' implementation proposals are due to the board by the end of the year.

'We've seen the bills from Deloitte, and we'd like to not have to pay too many more bills, if we can do that,” Mason said.

Deloitte to date has billed the universities $3.1 million for its work, essentially fulfilling its contract with the board. If Deloitte wants to be involved in the implementation of those efficiencies requiring outside assistance, it will have to bid against other firms.