About

Virginia Tech's Division of Human Resources is committed to supporting a high quality of work life for our 13,000 full and part-time employees. The division provides services that support the university’s leadership and employees, enabling them to achieve their goals and fulfill the university's land-grant mission. 

Our mission:

We claim our role in fostering an inclusive and engaged culture of excellence that enables Virginia Tech employees to serve as a force for positive change in a world without boundaries.

Our vision:

We will innovate to serve Virginia Tech as a best-in-class partner by providing:

• Strategic services that enhance the university's ability to attract, retain, and develop talent.
• Consultative services that create workplace solutions through strengthened collaboration.
• Administrative services that deliver simple, timely, and accurate HR services and information. 

Human Resources provides services that support the university’s leadership and employees, enabling them to achieve their goals and the mission of Virginia Tech. The department is committed to promoting excellence, equity, diversity, and access, and to supporting a high quality of work life for all employees.

Through the collaborative relationships that are established with university and community offices, the division strives to foster a supportive, welcoming, and safe community.

Human Resources is comprised of several areas, including benefits, HR support services, talent acquisitions, compensation, performance management, employee relations, talent development, and Hokie Wellness.

2023 Initiatives

Human Resources is focused on the following priorities to continue enhancing our employees’ experience and make Virginia Tech a Destination for Talent.

HR division directors: Continue to build the HR division director cohort, which positions senior HR partners to provide consultative HR services at the college or business unit level. As of 2023, the university has 12 division directors supporting administrative units and colleges. HR anticipates growing the cohort to 15 by the end of the calendar year.

HR division directors support and enhance strategic HR programs and builds consistency for HR policies and practices across the university. In addition to serving as an extension of the Division of HR, division directors coordinate and deliver comprehensive, strategically focused HR programs within their assigned senior management areas and business units.

Enhanced recruiting and retention strategies: Virginia Tech’s strategic goals continue to identify recruitment needs while the competition for talent is more intense than ever. In today’s market, which affords more flexible work options, we must compete for talent that may also be aggressively targeted by other employers.

As we seek to accomplish the mission of the university and make Virginia Tech a Destination for Talent, it is imperative that we attract and retain qualified and diverse talent through expanded recruiting services, review of recruiting practices, employing new and interactive recruitment strategies, and continue to enhance talent development offerings.

Administrative and Professional Faculty job architecture project: Currently there are over 2,400 A/P faculty positions with over 1,800 unique titles. This lack of structure creates inconsistent pay and titling practices - which can unintentionally create pay equity issues - as well as makes it difficult to benchmark salaries to the external market. Developing a job architecture structure for A/P faculty will allow positions to be organized based on functions, subfunctions, disciplines, classifications, and levels, allowing us to: 

• Ensure faculty are paid equitably based on their role and contribution. 
• Enhance the ability to recruit leading talent with competitive salaries and defined career paths. 
• Create accurate and consistent job titles that are appropriately aligned to roles and responsibilities.
• Create defined career paths so employees, candidates, and managers can help navigate careers.
• Establish salaries that are informed by what our peers and competitors offer.
• Achieve transparency in pay and pay practices.

The project is a multi-year effort that will provide a structure for titling, hiring, career pathing, and compensating positions and related job families across the university.

Enhanced HR technology: Since 2019, HR has launched seven new technology enabling systems for university leaders and employees. These systems include applicant tracking system, onboarding and new hire compliance, learning management, performance management for university and classified staff, customer service management, and a system to collect and track flexible work agreements. HR will continue to optimize these systems and make improvements to ensure an effective user experience.

Over the past three years, HR has successfully retired more than 60 paper forms by either eliminating the need for the form or reinventing the form electronically. The division will continue to look for opportunities to eliminate forms and optimize processes by transitioning to electronic methods.