Campus leadership approved a bold five-point compensation initiative, with implementation beginning in 2016.
1. Purchase and Maintain a Comprehensive Market Pay Survey Library: This includes current and relevant pay survey data. We use this data to collaborate with campus leadership in support of their well-informed pay decisions.
2. Create and Implement the Pay Evaluator©: The Pay Evaluator© helps college and division management make well-informed pay decisions that are systematic, disciplined, unbiased, and fiscally responsible. It is consistently used for all internal and external new hires, promotions as a result of reclassifications, and, when appropriate, internal salary alignments. It suggests appropriate pay positioning in a pay range that reflects:
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The job content value of the work being executed (as indicated by the pay grade range to which the job is assigned), and
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An employee’s directly related and relevant qualifications and work-related attributes directly compared to the job’s minimum qualification requirements as published on the job description.
3. Implement a Salary Alignment Process: This process is currently triggered by new-hire salary offers (internal or external). It allows college and division managers and their HR Liaisons to review a current employee’s pay level as a result of a potentially unjustifiable salary compression or salary inversion relative to the new hire’s pay level. Using the university’s Pay Evaluator© for the salary alignment review ensures that salary alignment adjustments are the result of well-informed and unbiased pay decisions.
4. Develop and Implement a Division-wide Decision Support Tool: This tool is used on a selective basis to analyze competitive pay positioning across a division. It utilizes the same Pay Evaluator© criteria and formula, ensuring well-informed and unbiased pay decisions.
5. Execute a Competitive Compensation Analysis and Infrastructure Study: Initiated in late 2019, the Mercer study’s goal was two-fold. First, provide the university leadership with the overall competitive pay positioning of university AP and US positions to those talent markets from which the university recruits. Second, serve as the basis for developing and implementing new market-competitive pay structures and pay ranges reflecting those talent markets. Competitive pay structures are critically important in supporting well-informed employee pay decisions and are a fundamental component of the Pay Evaluator©. This will be the first time since 2007 that the university has conducted such as study and developed new pay ranges. This study has been completed and information on resulting actions is included below.
6. Plus One – Minimum Hiring Rate: Implemented on Jan. 1, 2022 for both full-time and part-time regular employees, the MHR of $14.50 per hour ensures that all regular full-time employees, when benefits are included, earn at or above the generally accepted living wage for Lee County (currently $18.84 per hour).
