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KULSS Open Meeting
Guest Speaker, Ola Faucher HREO
New Job Banding and Salary Ranges

If you attended the Town Hall meetings for all University Support Staff held this month, much of the general information and the provided handouts will be repeated. The handouts are also available on the HREO website (see links below).

Chart of Salary Bands/Hiring Levels*
http://www.hreo.ku.edu/benefits_pay/pay_info

*This link doesn’t show include the handout for individual job titles within the salary bands (USS Title/Salary Model). The Library Assistant title (formerly LAI and LAII) is in salary Band D. Library Associate (formerly LAIII) is in salary Band F.

Ask a KULSS-Exec member for a copy of the USS Title/Salary Model for more detail.

USS Salary Administration FAQ
http://www.hreo.ku.edu/files/documents/USS_Pos_Title_Pay_FAQ.pdf

Ola began with a big picture overview of the changes to salary distribution and job titles:

  1. This is an ever-evolving process, by virtue of the USS system itself which now has the ability to make needed changes at any point, whereas in the civil service systems this was not possible. Remains in constant dialog with the greater University Support Staff Senate.
  2. These changes are in job titles only. There are no salary increase or decrease*, just establishing job titles and salary bands.
    3. * some KU jobs came in currently lower than the salary band’s lowest range. These are the only ones likely to get an increase.
  3. Apr 9th pay date implementation.

Ola explained how process of these changes was approached:

  1. Held focus groups, one involved library folks to build in feedback mechanism for the new approach.
    1. Developed job title summaries, this is still in the drafting process
  2. Took existing titles and grouped/collapsed into new categories with the aim to reduce the number of job titles. To allow for employees within a collapsed job title that are performing higher and lower level duties, there are expanded salary bands and hiring ranges within the salary bands to allow for this.
    1. Most other similar systems where salary bands are used have about 50% spread. KU’s is an 85% spread.
      o Took the concept of midpoint (average from salary survey) and apply 85% spread.
    2. Hiring ranges – when you hire in there is a 10% range; most salary bands have multiple hiring ranges to take into account varying levels of job difficulties.
      o this doesn’t effect current employees unless moved to new position – see promotion/transfer
  3. Keep in mind that job titles are not that important in this system. Can still create working titles within your department/unit to keep the value that job titles held for many folks.
    1. HREO must maintain some rigidity about what titles are put in the telephone and web directories. So, working titles need to have some commonality.
  4. Intend to do salary survey every other year.
    1. However, as a university we will never match 100% the market. For example, faculty is within 89% parity to peers. We can now be closer than in the past when we had to wait for state to act.
    2. Salary survey sources:
      o CUPA (College and University Professional Assoc)
      o Salary.com
      o Salary surveys from some Universities
      o Open to additional library sources – submit to HREO.

QUESTIONS

If the market survey turned out to be lower than ours, would we change to go lower?
- Not in as much as in the history of this institution that it’s never happened. Never say never, but highly unlikely.

What is salary.com? Doesn’t it gather from the private sector (which isn’t applicable to us as University)?
- They do have a public sector information tool which people can use to get salary info from a variety of sources (including the private sector, like monster.com). The sources salary.com uses are proprietary surveys, so they are kept confidential. The salary.com tool that KU HREO uses allows slicing and dicing by region and industry. It also applies weighting factor and consulting. For example, there is no survey for Lawrence and the only ones for Kansas took from Kansas City and Wichita. Allows us to add a 5% weighting factor and for future can take our University salary info and dump into the salary.com tool to do internal equity studies

There is oversight of merit increases to make sure the 1/3 is distributed evenly. Will there be similar oversight of the 10% hiring range?
- HREO will not oversee within 10%, will require justification only if wanting to hire in at over 10%.
- Leave it to units/departments internally to take discretion within the 10% since they will now have the responsibility of handling the money like they do with unclassified positions. Formerly the classified vacancy went down to step 4 and university took money to central fund. Now vacancy money remains in library.

Couldn’t this keep a person from getting a job?
- This happens now and yes, could continue. I.e. if you want to hire a person who is more qualified but you can’t afford them. On the other (positive) hand, there is more flexibility in this system to care for that. .

In Salary Band D where Library Assistant has been collapsed from Library Asst I and II how do you distinguish these levels when you advertise and hire?
- job title summary (though this is not an exact position description) helps generally and adds an asterisk beside the responsibility and requirement that represents the higher level.
- You do keep the distinction in the levels as far as pay is concerned by denoting hiring range levels within the salary band. This distinction is recorded in the HR Pay system for each position.
- And now (not being in the civil service system) we have the local ability to add more levels as needed. Formerly needed to convince the entire state of KS.

Will we know what changes were made to our job titles?
- You will see this one your annual salary notice in July and that will also include merit increase information.
- Do you want a separate notice of your job title change in April from HREO? Leave to library administration to inform you? Or is salary notice in July enough.

Was there any talk of changing the title Library Assistant to something else?
- it came up in focus group but no decision was made. Very little time left to suggest changes; only next 2-3 days.

Does the hiring band amount include longevity?
- No, these are base salary only.
- Longevity is added to the base.
- Salary surveys do not include the longevity factor

Is the Annual Maximum just like what we have now where we “top out”?
- No because of merit and across the board increases as well as other increase opportunities (formerly reclassifications see below).
- Also, salary surveys every other year to adjust this as needed.

Ola gave an overview of the effect these changes have on reclassifications or ways in which current staff can get salary increases.

USS Salary Guidelines
http://www.hreo.ku.edu/forms/files/USSsalaryincrguide.pdf

USS Across-the-Board & Merit Increases FAQ
http://www.hreo.ku.edu/forms/files/USSPayFAQ.pdf

  1. Across the board and merit
    1. There is an annual salary pool which the University matches USS funds to Unclassified.
    2. 2/3 of pool to satisfactory evaluation, 1/3 for merit per library recommendation up through central administration
    3. will happen at the beginning of fiscal year (hope for Jun 18) rather than in chunks like last year.
    4. Dependent upon the Board of Regents approving the block grant for all universities, which always happens 3rd week in June.
  2. B/w mid-June and first week of July merit increases take effect. If merit looks small this year, remember that we are above colleague across the state.
  3. Former reclassification now called in-band increases, b/w band increases
    1. Opened window through March 1 for reclasses in pipeline. Next window is July 1
    2. However, these increase request are open all year long, they are just not acted on during certain periods (i.e. fiscal close).
  4. All changes in salaries and hires must be permanently funded by department.

QUESTIONS

Who determines who get what type of merit?
- This varies by organization. Shannon Royer answered: Vice Provost Stephens decided to distribute merit IS wide this year by type based on rankings that equate to percentage. Decisions made in conjunction with supervisor and Dean of Libraries.

Who do we meet with personally to have our merit explained?
- Again varies by organization.
- Supervisor is not made aware of the rankings of their employees (all local organization decisions)

Could money needed for damages from the microburst effect funds that would be allocated for USS?
- University plan is to not take salary money for building money. However, Legislature could decide whatever they wanted, e.g. to not to give salary money based on building issues. But such a response from the Legislature is not expected.

Salary band for Library Assistant have 2 levels, 1 and 3, but the Library Associate Salary band is on level 2. How was this decided?
- Compared to current and equitable job title salaries and salary surveys.
- Level 1 and 3 on Band D is different that a 2 on Band F.

Will I be told what percentage of merit I got and if it is high/low merit?
- Cannot be notified of merit increase until board of regents approves.
- Encourage all department/units to have individual meetings with USS folks to explain the merit process and how it was given.
- This year HREO will be sending out notices of merit with the annual salary notices.
o Currently just gives an amount (must subtract longevity to then calculate give percentage). But, hope to include that after working through mechanics.
o Will give info if merit at all, but no distinctions as to why the merit percent was provided. That must come from your local administration.

Individual member gets letter about their merit, who else sees this?
- Since its now coming from HREO, you should be the only person seeing this.
- Salaries are a matter of public record however in the University Archives.

Position that becomes vacant and turned into lower salary hire. Does the difference stay with the library?
- Yes and in USS pool.

What is the process for updating job descriptions? How does it differ from process for student job pools? How can we see the forms to know the required qualifications?
- Updated in the software tool PeopleAdmin by hiring managers (ours are Donna and Rita).
- HREO website still has old template for updating job descriptions. Ola will see about centrally providing a template.
- Will also see if Print out from PeopleAdmin has security level allowing to get just into job descriptions.
- For now can cut and paste info into word and forward to Hiring Managers, but perhaps need more hiring managers in order to help update job descriptions.

USS Workgroup plans?
- meet twice a month
- notes available on USS Senate website http://www2.ku.edu/~clsenate/WorkGroup.shtml