Sustaining Staff Compensation: 5 Practical Steps

Has your college or university recently completed a comprehensive compensation study for staff? Congratulations! Your efforts will go a long way toward ensuring a campus culture of integrity, equity, and transparency.

After investing the time and financial resources to build the program, how can you ensure its credibility and effectiveness over time through personnel changes, organizational changes, and market shifts?

Consider the following important steps you can take now as an investment in the future of your institution and your new compensation program:

1. Communicate the program’s principles and methodology at the outset of implementation to all employees, with a special focus on those who manage others.

Hold Town Hall-style sessions to introduce the program to staff, supervisors, and faculty who supervise staff. If you’ve worked with outside consultants on this project, this might be included in their scope of work. Presentations led by senior leaders, with assistance from your consultants, speak volumes about the institution’s ownership and accountability going forward.

Conduct Manager Training by area leadership. The CHRO should meet with each division’s management team as part of the implementation process to make sure everyone who has management responsibility understands a) the program, b) their role in the program, and c) how pay decisions link to performance feedback.

Continue to communicate once the program has been implemented. Orient all new managers to the program. Communicate any significant program changes when they occur and update your training materials accordingly. Training will not only engage managers but will also reinforce the important connection between HR and area leadership in shared (and data-informed) decision-making.

2. Follow program principles and methodology consistently.

Commit to the consistent application of the key principles and methodology of your program in managing compensation day-to-day. Develop and use a set of salary administration guidelines. Clearly describe the roles of managers, senior leaders, and the HR team in the salary administration guidelines, then hold everyone accountable in their respective roles. Minimize exceptions and ensure that any exceptions you make are supported by legitimate business reasons.

3. Use the whole salary range in making pay decisions.

Include salary administration guidelines for using the full salary ranges of your new structure. As you evaluate each pay decision, consider the experience, skills, and contribution/performance level of the incumbent or candidate and identify the recommended pay point. Next, consider fiscal realities and internal equity that could influence the actual pay point.

4. Consider the following inputs for every pay decision:

• The Program’s principles and methodology.

• Area Leadership - for in-depth knowledge of the position/area.

• HR - for consistency in decision-making across the system.

• Finance – for perspectives and data on fiscal realities.

5. Keep compensation and performance management closely linked.

Manage performance feedback consistently across the system. Facilitate management training on performance feedback and give managers the opportunity to talk through challenging performance scenarios with someone on the HR team. Encourage managers to discuss pay in the context of performance feedback and to be clear on areas of development necessary to advance pay point or be promoted. If you don’t have a system-wide performance feedback process and schedule, now is the time to consider implementing one.

Learn More

Casagrande Institute’s consultants have decades of experience working with colleges and universities to ensure compensation effectiveness. We welcome the chance to speak with you. Please contact Karen Hutcheson or Sharon Eisenmann to learn more about staff compensation issues in higher education and the services we provide to help you develop, manage, implement, and sustain effective compensation structures and practices.