Compensation and Classification Study Services

The vendor required to provide compensation and classification study services to evaluate the city’s current classification and salary structures as compared to similar municipalities and in the private sector where applicable.
- Objectives
•    Attract and retain highly qualified employees; 
•    Ensure positions performing similar work with essentially the same level of complexity, responsibility, and required 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 job classifications; 
•    Maintain a competitive market position with other comparable government entities and private employers (as applicable) within the same geographic areas, and 
•    Address pays compression and equity issues; 
•    Ensure staffing levels are appropriately aligned with workload, service demand, and best practices, identifying areas of potential overstaffing or understaffing; and identify root causes of overtime, including scheduling, backfilling, pay structures, and deployment practices; 
•    Ensure programs offered by the city align with operational needs, fiscal sustainability, legal requirements, and best practices for similarly situated public sector organizations.
- Requirement:
1. Classification study
•    Assess the city’s current classification system to include the current methodology, structure, and procedures and make recommendations for adjustments and improvement. 
•    Review each job classification and make recommendations for adjustments to placement in the plan and salary adjustments. 
•    Analyze the job classification structure (e.g. Job levels and families) and make recommendations for potential consolidation or expansion. 
•    Recommend an approach to revising the classification system.
2. Compensation study
•    Assess the city’s human resources classification and compensation plan and related compensation policies and make recommendations for revision and improvement. 
•    Evaluate the city’s pay structure (e.g. Range spread, midpoint progression) and make recommendations for adjustment and improvement. 
•    Recommend appropriate pay structure adjustments for jobs and job groups and develop the appropriate pay structure for each employee group (general employees, sworn police, sworn fire, and sworn sheriff) 
•    Assess the competitiveness of the city’s human resources classification and compensation plan, compensation policies, and pay structure. 
•    Review the city’s current step plan charts and step progression rules for all employee groups (general employees, sworn police, sworn fire, and sworn sheriff) and assess competitiveness, equity, time-to-top, compression impacts, and fiscal implications. 
•    The contractor shall apply recognized public safety compensation practices in evaluating sworn pay structures, including work-period design (e.g., 21- day and 7-day cycles), overtime calculation methods, special and premium pays, shift differentials, and backfill practices. 
•    Evaluate actual pay against the market and recommend solutions to address areas of concern. 
•    Recommend the placement of all city job classifications in any proposed new pay ranges or recommend pay grade adjustments for certain job classifications within the existing pay ranges, as deemed appropriate, including any recommended pay adjustments for affected incumbents. 
•    Identify any disparities between the recommended plan and current actual salaries, quantify such disparities, and recommend a process for resolving such disparities. 
•    Recommend processes for movement through the pay ranges such as cost-of-living adjustments, off-cycle salary increases, step increases where applicable, or other pay adjustment methods.
•    Evaluate and identify current pay compression and equity issues, including supervisory compression, and recommend solutions to address those issues that are easy to understand and communicate, and practical to implement. 
•    Provide cost implications of recommended changes. 
•    Recommend an approach to maintaining and updating the compensation system to ensure internal equity and external competitiveness. 
•    Assess the competitiveness of the city’s supplemental pay programs (recognition pay, education incentives, certification stipends, etc.) and make recommendations for improvement.