COMPENSATION STUDY PANEL

Transcription

1 COMPENSATION STUDY PANEL TAMMY BIGELOW, SHERBURNE COUNTY CATHY FESTE, PIPESTONE COUNTY SUE LUING, NOBLES COUNTY

2 DOES YOUR COUNTY WANT TO DO A COMPENSATION STUDY? Questions to ask. When is the last time the County did a compensation study? Has it been at least 8-10 years since the last one? Do some of your positions seem out of market? (based on salary data you ve seen from other counties) Would the board be supportive of a compensation study and implementation of the results? Does your county need to develop a new pay system to be in compliance with Pay Equity?

3 PREPARATION PHASE 1. Have the board approve the compensation study get their buy-in 2. Determine the goals and scope of your study What services are provided by the consultant? What is HR s role in the process How much time do you foresee the consultant spending at your County? Are they presenting to all employees, department heads, or committees? Do you want an appeal process?

4 PREPARATION PHASE 3. Committee Establishment a. Decide if you want to establish a compensation study committee, consult with your Labor Attorney to see if it s a good idea. b. Consider a committee that represents a diverse group of employees department heads, union, and non-union, and Commissioners. c. Make sure you define clear roles for each of the members of the committee. (they are not the final decision makers on job ratings)

5 CHOOSING A CONSULTANT Develop a Request for Proposal outlining the scope and expectations of your County s project. Make sure the board approves the RFP. Post the RFP on the AMC website, send directly to consultants you are interested in. Interview consultants If you are planning to have them create new job descriptions, verify their writing ability. Consider personality match and culture match you will likely be working with them for the next 10 to 20 years. Get references, make sure they are familiar with County government in Minnesota. Get a timeline from them, but make sure to anticipate 12 months of longer regardless of what they tell you.

6 IDENTIFY COMPARABLE EMPLOYERS Consultant should help with choosing comparable employers, including Counties Cities School Districts State employees Private Sector Include County legal counsel or labor attorney to discuss impact on union negotiations.

7 MARKET SURVEY Identify positions from different departments within your County for the Consultant to include in the Market survey. Usually about positions. Survey participants will more likely respond if they have similar positions, so try to pick common ones that most counties share. (e.g. Engineering Technician, Deputy Sheriff, County Administrator, Building and Grounds Worker) Consultant sends out Market survey to participants and asks them to complete. (usually takes about days)

8 COMMUNICATION Communicate to staff who you are using for comparable employers. Develop a regular communication plan. Initial meetings with the consultant Monthly s. Updates on delays. Familiarize yourself with the consultant s process and help answer employee questions. Discuss with the Consultant if you want them to look at opportunities to combine positions or restructuring opportunities Carefully consider changes and how they will be communicated to staff, this can be a sensitive topic.

9 COLLECTING POSITION INFORMATION Position description questionnaires (pdqs) are sent to employees to complete. Ideally employees in the same position should work together to create one pdq for their classification. Supervisors must sign off on the pdqs and state if they agree or disagree with the employee s summary of the position. They should also share this information with the employee. Consider if consultant will interview a representative of every job classification in the County (i.e. 15 minute interviews). Consider if consultant will interview department heads in the County. Both of these can help with staff and department head buy-in.

10 PRELIMINARY RESULTS Based upon job ratings and market study. Consultant analyzes and develops a recommended pay structure. Consultant should run a test pay equity report to make sure you will pass Pay Equity. Consultant provides HR with preliminary results. HR asks questions if preliminary results appear out of alignment. Consider allowing department heads to look at preliminary classifications Provide them with classifications only for their departments. Have all staff meetings to discuss final results. Decide if you are distributing classification information only or if you are also including compensation information.

11 APPEALS PROCESS Consult with your Labor Attorney to determine if you will or will not have an appeals process. Usually the appeal should be based on inaccuracies in the job description or job duties that have changes since the beginning of the study. Communicate to staff how the Appeals process works. 1. Employee completes appeal. 2. Department head reviews the appeal, forwards to HR for review. 3. HR forwards to the consultant. 4. Result of appeal is shared with employee. Determine if the County views the consultant s decision as final.

12 COMPENSATION STUDY APPROVAL AND IMPLEMENTATION Final results are brought to the County Board for approval. Job descriptions, job ratings, and new pay plan. Implementation plan is brought to the County Board for approval. Decide what to do with employees above or below the new scale. Look at leap-frogging issues among current employees and new hires. Look at total cost of the implementation and decide whether or not to implement right away or in phases. Provide copies of the new job descriptions to employees. Results of the study need to be negotiated with the unions Make sure you consider the timeline of negotiations when the board approves the new plan.

13 QUESTIONS?

14 Classification & Compensation Study Considerations PREPARATION Have clear goals with Board buy-in before beginning the process. This will help target the consultant better and everyone can be reminded of the goals when the study results come back. Determine the scope of your study (classification and/or compensation), services that will be provided by the consultant versus completed internally, amount of time consultant is expected to be on-site meeting with employees and/or presenting to various committees, and whether or not you want an appeal process and what that will look like. Consider a committee that represents a diverse group of employees department heads, union and non-union, and Commissioners. Having Commissioners at the table can help with buy-in on implementation. If you choose to have a committee, defining the role of the committee is very important. CHOOSING A CONSULTANT Develop and send out RFPs for a Class & Comp Consultant. RFP can be posted on county (and possibly AMC) website. Also, send RFP to known Class & Comp Consultants. Articulate scope of study and expectations in RFP and consultant interview process. If you plan to have the consultant create new position descriptions, be sure to verify the quality of their writing ability. When choosing consultant consider personality match and culture match. You will ideally be working with the person for the next 20 years. Anticipate 12 months or longer for completion of the study regardless of what Consultant tells you. Consider a timeline that lines up with union negotiations, so results are available when union negotiations start. IDENTIFY COMPARABLE EMPLOYERS Carefully consider comparable employers. Include county legal counsel if changing comparables to discuss impact on negotiations. Class & Comp Consultant should assist with selecting comparables (look at surrounding counties and other similarly situated employers). Discuss including cities, schools, state and private sector look at who you lose employees to. INFORMATION TO REVIEW WITH CONSULTANT/MARKET SURVEY If you are considering restructuring and/or combining positions, discuss this with the Consultant prior to beginning the Study. Depending on the proposed changes, the Consultant may be able to provide a recommendation after review of the positions. Restructuring and combining positions can be a sensitive topic, so carefully consider any changes and how the changes will be communicated to staff. Carefully consider benchmark positions that will be part of salary survey to comparable employers. It is also important that the comparable employers can easily identify the benchmark positions within their organizations when completing the salary survey. COMMUNICATION Communicate to staff who you are using for your comparable employers. Develop a regular communication plan monthly (or more often) s updating staff on the progress. Inform staff of their role, what to expect, and when to expect it. Keep everyone updated on delays.

15 Invite all staff and business representatives (for meet and confer purposes) to meetings where Class & Comp Consultant describes process and answers questions. COLLECTING POSITION INFORMATION Position Questionnaires are sent out to employees to complete. Classification of two or more employees can work together to complete a Position Questionnaire together for their classification. Supervisors also offer comments on the Position Questionnaire if there is anything they don t agree with. Supervisors should share their comments with employees for transparency. Consider if Consultant will interview a representative of every job classification in the county (i.e. 15 minute interviews). Interviews will assist in staff buy-in. Consider if Consultant will interview department heads in the county. Interviews will assist in department head buy-in. PRELIMINARY RESULTS Consultant provides HR with preliminary results. HR asks questions if preliminary results appear out of alignment. Consider allowing Department Heads to see preliminary classifications and allow for them to ask for re-consideration with ample documented reasons. When information is provided to staff, decide if you will distribute classification information only or both classification and compensation information at the same time. Provide Department Heads only with the classifications in their department, not the whole new system. This can help avoid comparing across the hall. Share this information with Department Heads before distributing to employees. Have all staff meetings to discuss preliminary results of the study (send out preliminary results in advance to employees, so they are prepared with questions). APPEALS PROCESS & FINAL RESULTS If you decide to offer an appeals process, let everyone know how the process will work. Employee submits their appeal to department head to review. Department head decides if the appeal is provided to the Consultant. The department head should be transparent with employee on if the appeal moves forward and if the department head adds any comments to the appeal. An appeal should not move forward just because employee doesn t like the results. Employee needs to provide new information not in their original Position Questionnaire and/or clearly articulate why they believe the result for their classification is inaccurate. Result of appeal is shared with employee. Determine if your county will view the decision of the Consultant as final. Consultant should assure final results pass pay equity requirements. The final results of the study (both classification results and new compensation plan/salary table) is brought to the County Board for approval. An implementation plan for the study is also brought to the Board for approval (for nonunion employees). Keep in mind leap-frogging issues amongst new hires and employees, as well as what you ll plan to do with any employees above the new scale. IMPLEMENTATION Provide employees a copy of their new job descriptions (do not rely on Department Heads to do this for you). The results of the study and the implementation of the study needs to be negotiated with the unions.