Employee Compensation and Pay Classification Study Services

The Vendor is required to provide the city with employee compensation and pay classification study.
- The Classification and Compensation Study is to address changes in City operations and staffing
- The City’s objectives are to:
•    Attract and retain qualified employees.
•    Ensure positions performing similar work with essentially the same level of complexity, responsibility, knowledge, skills, and abilities are classified together.
•    Provide salaries commensurate with assigned duties.
•    Clearly outline promotional opportunities and provide recognizable compensation growth.
•    Provide justifiable pay differential between individual classes.
•    Maintain a competitive position with other comparable government entities and private employers within the same geographic area.
- Work closely with the Human Resources Director and meet with City representatives as necessary to prepare the survey process and present results and recommendations derived from the study.
- Classification Plan:
•    Conduct interviews and/or job audits of every job within the city. May be conducted with individual employees or in groups based upon classification.
•    Provide for a comprehensive evaluation of every job within the city to determine relative worth within the organization for internal equity.
•    Analyze current workforce within the context of the city’s established priorities and workload to determine if the current number of staff (full-time employees) meets organizational needs. Based on the analysis, provide recommendations for the addition or elimination of full-time employees.
•    Provide recommendations on staff alignments, reporting relationships and organizational structure.
•    Provide a straightforward, easily understood, maintenance system that the city will use to keep the classification system current and equitable. The classification system should be provided in an electronic medium in word and pdf format. Maintenance should include annual activities, as well as the process to be used in the review of the classification of individual jobs, as needed.
•    The system must easily accommodate organization change and growth or conversion.
•    The system should be based upon sound compensation principles in which both internal and external equity are considered within the pay structure as well as the concepts of equal pay for equal work, equal pay for similar work, and equal pay for comparable work.
•    The system should provide for new positions to be incorporated into the compensation plan as well as appropriate adjustments to maintain the compensation plan’s effectiveness.
•    Update job descriptions to uniformly reflect the distinguishing characteristics, essential job functions, minimum qualifications (education and experience; knowledge, skills and abilities), working conditions (physical demands, work environment, etc.), and certification, license, and/or registration requirements for classification as needed.
- Compensation Plan
•    Review current compensation plan (salary grade levels, steps and available benefits) and understand current challenges in recruiting and retaining employees.
•    Review current classification grade methodology and propose recommended strategies for the city.
•    Conduct a comprehensive base salary and benefits survey and an analysis of positions in comparable state municipalities. Historically, the city has used the following cities as its benchmark cities:
•    Recommend a classification and compensation salary range for each position based on the compensation survey results and establish a plan for progressions within the ranges.
•    Identify potential or existing pay compression issues and provide solutions.
•    Identify any extreme current individual or group compensation inequities and provide a recommended corrective action plan and process to remedy deviations.
•    Analyze and recommend changes to the present compensation structure to meet market analysis. This should include recommendations for individual positions, and cost impacts.
•    Recommend implementation strategies for compensation practices, based on market demands, including pay for performance, skill pay, certification/education compensation, special assignment compensation, bilingual pay, promotional pay, and acting assignment pay.
•    Develop guidelines to assist city staff with determining the starting pay for new employees based on knowledge and experience above the minimum requirements of the position, how difficult the position is to fill, and market competitiveness.