The final count is in for the second retirement incentive, and the yield was much larger than expected.
As of Dec. 15, 89 of 198 employees who were mailed individual retirement incentive packages in mid-October decided to retire.
Only one employee who accepted the offer Dec. 8 decided to pull out during the seven-day withdrawal window.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said in October that he “would be surprised” if 50 employees accepted the latest incentive, since the first incentive had an acceptance rate of about 35 percent.
The first round of retirement incentives were offered to all bi-weekly employees who have worked at Duke for at least 10 years and are at least 50 years old. Bi-weekly employees include housekeepers, custodians and police officers. The second round was offered to a hand-picked group of salaried employees.
The yield for this round was about 45 percent, which Vice President for Human Resources Kyle Cavanaugh considers a “very positive return.”
Trask said with wages and benefits, the projected savings from the retirement of monthly salaried employees will total about $7.5 million.
This is the last large centralized cost-cutting measure the University will implement as it works to cut its budget by $125 million over three years. Administrators continue to say that there will be no large-scale layoffs.
“I think we’re past the need for a systemic institutional layoff—even though individual units may have to—there will not be a large-scale layoff program,” Trask said.
Cavanaugh said the results of the retirement incentives place the University in an “optimistic place” in comparison to six months ago.
“Duke has been systematic and thoughtful in how it has been navigating these increasingly unprecedented times in higher education,” Cavanaugh said. “There are still challenges that we will face. We remain optimistic about how the University has managed this past year and how it will handle 2010 and beyond.”
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