Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 27
>> 27 to receive a report from the compensation committee.
anything further?
>> [laughter]
>> nice graphic, nice clip art.
>> > good afternoon, sherri flemming, county executive for health and human services and veterans services.
but I sit here today as the vice chair of the compensation committee to bring you the first part of the compensation committee report.
joining me is todd osborne, compensation manager from hrmd and we will be presenting our report to you today.
as you may remember, the committee was formed by direction of the Commissioners court in February of 2009.
>> [reading graphic] generally the representatives of the compensation committee were based on job families, it was our interest to have as many of the county's job families represented by the membership of the compensation committee as possible.
and there you see the list of committee members.
I would note that jim collins after those first 10 meetings or so was our chair.
and then of course I was the vice chair and you see all of the other members there of the various departments, we also have representation from hrmd both as a participant and an advisor and then also afscme was a participant in the committee.
there you see our other members.
the objectives were to review the county's current compensation philosophy.
>> [reading graphic] some of the challenges we encountered in the two years that we were working together were certainly changes in the administrative operations in hrmd.
>> [reading graphic] we found that we were having our meetings regularly, we had robust participation, but I would think that my fellow committee members would indicate that we felt our movement was somewhat sluggish.
the decentralized nature of county government also brought up a lot of issues there.
some we had control over and many, many issues we didn't have any control over.
exclusion of pops from our scope.
so again issues arising that we have no control over.
the connection between compensation and budget.
it's hard to separate those two and not talk about one without talking about the other.
and then the extent to which we would focus as a committee to the extent that our focus should be on past issues versus forward focus.
you can imagine there was a lot of processing of the things in the compensation system that have gone awry.
but we made it through.
and so our key products that we will be presenting to you both today and in two weeks.
our compensation philosophy, compensation strategy, changes/modifications that we would recommend to the current compensation policy and then the communication strategy for our workforce so that staff have an opportunity to also review our recommendations.
and this graphic shows the order of our focus and the sequence of our deliberations.
we first started with the compensation philosophy, which I will share with you in just a moment.
we went into compensation strategy, which I will have my colleague here share with you in just a moment.
and then we will get into on the 26th at our 26th voting session the compensation -- recommended compensation policy changes.
so just as a remainder, the current compensation philosophy ...
>> [reading graphic] so that is our current compensation philosophy.
the committee recommends the compensation philosophy as you see before you.
>> [reading graphic]
>> is there a short answer to the question, what are the reasons for the change?
>> the next slide.
>> hush, judge and go to the next slide.
that's short enough.
>> [laughter]
>> okay.
we aim to please, judge.
we aim to please.
and I agree with you, the distinctions seem to be somewhat subtle, but the proposed changes to the compensation philosophy reflect some shift that's we think are important.
the revised philosophy more clearly places the emphasis of the compensation philosophy on recruitment, motivation and retention of employees.
but also it highlights the idea that we expect our employees to provide exemplary service to county residents in return.
another shift is the addition of the phrase total compensation.
>> [reading graphic] with the appreciation that we are sort of in a place right now in the market where it may be difficult right now to measure the extent of work life factors and how that factors in the compensation, but I think it also represents some optimism that we believe as compensation overall evolves there will be better ways to measure those work life factors in the future.
then the proposed compensation philosophy emphasizes that the system must be fair to all employees while maintaining sufficient flexibility to account for differences in the type of work performed.
we also chose to emphasize the need for market competitiveness
>> [reading graphic] we'll talk more about that as todd goes through the strategies.
and I will -- I will move on to todd and the primary areas of the compensation strategy.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners.
I'm todd osborne, compensation manager and was a participant of the compensation committee, was at every meeting and every work session and just about every committee session.
when we are trying to develop the compensation strategy, really we are trying to focus our discussion around what were the core issues and then trying to develop core areas where we could talk about them in conjunction.
we decided really there were four key areas, those four key areas were total compensation, the trend is towards looking at all aspects of compensation rather than just what shows up in the paycheck or what we might consider to be base pay.
we also want to make sure that we look at the structure of the compensation system here and should we be looking at any revisions or alterations of our pay scales.
whether they be the -- the widths or the number of grades or basically the basic structure of the pay grades themselves.
the third key area was pay equity.
in other words, we wanted to look at how do we make compensation fair within the organization and looking at how fair we pay in comparison to the outside marketplace.
and the issue of fairness was something that was -- that was robustly discussed in a number of the meetings.
finally we were looking at employee mobility, which is how do employees move through the compensation classification system itself.
how do they go across their pay ranges and how do they go up and down the pay scale in what types of policies should be in place to make that a good way to do it.
>> that particular issue, how do we evaluate that right now, having employees use that mobility to their advantage, either vertically or horizontally?
>> currently, moving across the pay scale has been an historic combination of -- of performance based pay, the court has said some instances awarded across the board increases or what are commonly referred to as cola.
and there's also the option of a salary adjustment for employees.
as for going up and down the pay scale, we have various promotion and demotion policies.
we also have a system for a number of our employees who are on a career ladder, but we also have a number of employees that are not in a career ladder.
one of the issues that we want to be tack capitolling in more dementis taking a -- tackling is taking a more in depth look at which employees should be on career ladders which ones should not.
that's a question that took up a great deal of discussion.
>> if we had to grade it, if we had to grade ourselves on employee mobility, what would we get?
I would grade us -- I would grade us a c in terms of our ability to move up and down the pay scale.
I don't think that the rules are very explicit in some areas.
and in terms of going across the pay scale, in some instances I would rate us an a, some instances maybe a c, also.
>> because in 1998 when we redid all of the job descriptions and I guess the market study was that one of the first market studies that was done, but it was really comprehensive.
this was an issue.
employee mobility and how folks really didn't utilize -- or weren't able to promote vertically, but went horizontally, along the line horizontally which is not really getting them into any kind of upward mobility.
and so -- so seems to still be hanging around, we wondered if we're going to be able to get around to a good solution for it this time around.
I think these solutions will come forward on the 26th then.
in terms of the recommendation.
>> that's what I'm looking for.
>> but I would add to that, just because I can't stand it, not to say it.
that is that some of these issues are -- are really, you know, there's as many pros as there are cons.
and I think, you know, for example when you talk about employee mobility, that brings us in the discussion about career ladders.
I think without signing up I mean there's potentially work on the issue of career ladders by itself.
you know?
one of the difficulties that I think we had as a committee is zeroing in on the big picture issues, but keeping in mind that there are some things like career ladders that we really have to really dig down into once we get past this portion of our work.
so ...
>> going into key strategy area number 1, which is total compensation, the slides are really based on key issues and questions that came up.
certainly within the area of total compensation, there is a distinction and noticeable tend ...
one of the things that we want to do is set a total goal that goes beyondw looking at just base salary, including other facets of compensation, such as benefits, work life areas, and those things that are a little bit harder to quantify.
one of the problems that we did notice is that the county is not reallyh% think equated into all of it.
and -- and I guess -- I'm having trouble with -- with the overall with the overall package.
the entire complete package
>> [] we can say compensation, but compensation has -- has components to it.
and I think that you are bringing these components out, but -- but then at the end of the day, let's say employees say well really I ir2 a salary.
have -- we have health insurance and I know that we have this and I know that we have that separate from this salary.
salary plus benefits, all right plus some other things that may be a point of benefits.
when you really look at it, how is that dollar amount can be embraced in the whole of -- of the employee as far as what they receive, because different things, different parts of this, of course different -- different employees fall up under different settings, different situations, but at the end of the day it's a lot of related stuff, not related stuff, but related things there as far as dollar amount that -- that -- on the other side of the equal sign.
as far as all of those things to the left of the equal sign being -- being all of those things that I discussed but did on the right side of the equal sign we look and see what the total amount is.
how can that be actually addressed to really let a person, employee know that these are some of the things that -- how do you separate that?
>> well, you view it as an equation, as you brought it up.
you can certainly measure and we do measure the cash value of our pay ranges versus the marketplace.
so consider that to be component a.
that's done today.
it's something that is probably the easiest thing to quantify and measure.
the second component would be benefits and there you're talking about things such as health insurance and life insurance, retirement, those types of issues.
certainly all of those have a value.
and they are measurable, although not quite as precisely.
so you can take a and you can take b and you can take that and compare it to the market.
it's where you start getting into c that things are a little bit more gray.
when you start to talk about what is the value of -- of somebody in the public sector having a greater job security, for example, than somebody in the private sector might have.
what is the value to that.
it's very difficult to answer that question.
rather than trying to slap a value on something like that, what the -- what the committee decided to do was we wanted to include in our definition of total compensation, those things that we could compare and we could measure across jurisdictions.
so consequently, if we couldn't compare it and we couldn't measure it, we opted not to include it into the definition at this time and as sherri said, if we get to the point where we can better quantify those things that are in the work life area, we'll include those into the definition.
but as for right now, we -- we have not done historically, we have not made any effort really at all to try to put a dollar value on most of those things.
that's something that we need to do going forward and to see if we can continue the trend towards putting these total compensation components together to give us an accurate representation of where Travis County is in the marketplace.
my -- my belief based on my time here is that when it comes to the marketplace, Travis County on a pay standpoint is -- is at the moment slightly behind what we would consider to be our market.
I think our benefits were ahead of our market peers and on the work life issues, this is very perceptual thing, I would say that Travis County is a very good place to work.
and is probably better than most private sector settings, but it's difficult to measure.
it is against other public sector organizations.
>> the point I remember during the public hearing that we had recently before the employees of Travis County, we heard testimony from different folks, but one person really is -- kind of stands out with me.
it was the deal, the situation whereby he testified that he had access to the wellness clinic for an example.
of course, that -- that was the real good situation for him because it was -- it was life saving access point to -- to his relationship.
and of course how do you put a value on that?
you know?
but there is the availability of the wellness clinic throughout Travis County, which is -- which is an added benefit, but then when you get ready to equate dollars, how do you equate dollars to something like that.
when it saves folks lives and gives them in other situations --
>> exactly.
the wellness clinic is a classic example of a work-life issue that's extremely difficult to put a financial value on.
if we ever get to the point where we can measure that on a regular basis and where our peers if they have a wellness clinic, if they can put a measure on, they will include that into the total calculation.
for now we would have to keep it out.
>> okay.
thank you.
>>
>> [indiscernible] currently we have a compensation benefit.
our proposal would be to have a work/life committee for people to work and do measurements about all of those work/life issues that are related to Travis County employees.
and then at the beginning of the budget process to have representatives from these three committees get together on a total compensation committee.
so then when it comes time to bring recommendations forward to the Commissioners court, so what we would consider to be a total compensation, rather than bringing discussion of salary and benefits and key work/life issues separately, so the county could then start to view these as basically just a rather large bucket that we can make comprehensive decisions on.
should we -- should we be looking at increasing you know employee contributions versus salary and basically having more integrated discussions about the various component parts of compensation and bringing those together early in the process and start to view this as a -- as a comprehensive item.
>> in that case why wouldn't you just bring them together to function as one permanently?
and not just during budget season?
>> yep.
>> well, we certainly could.
>> you had me going with you until I realized has these three don't come together right after our vote and work together throughout the year and then come with a list of recommendations.
>> well, I would prefer that the total compensation committee be a standing committee with representatives from each of these three being a subcommittee and then they get together during the course of the year.
typically there's not a whole lot of movement on these until we start to approach the budget season anyway.
we tend to fix things on a budgetary cycle here.
so we can certainly have these committees working independently and then bring them together prior to the budget, we could have working together really the idea is to get some specialization on the subcommittees and then bring them together for a more comprehensive look.
approve.
>> what would be the -- there are substantive and important differences between rank and file and pops employees.
but what in your opinion would be the effect of -- of bringing the total compensation, if we were to have a total compensation committee that included three subcommittees of pay, benefits, and work/life balance, what would be the effect of rolling the pops category in with the rank and file?
the issue categories are the same, but of course there are elements about the job that are different.
>> we did not intend a great deal of time on the pops.
our charge was to look at the classified employees.
if you are asking me can we include the pops employees as part of the process, that would certainly be a decision for you to make.
I don't -- I think that we would have to expand the ranks
>> [indiscernible] certainly.
I guess overall, the question would be it would start to bring up a lot more detailed discussions about equity between the -- between the classified employees and the pops employees.
it would probably be a good thing overall, but -- but currently we're not structured to operate in that fashion.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> y'all have hit a slip stream, but not having worked over the rough spots.
>> one of the key questions that we did ask ourselves is where does Travis County want to position it's zest from a market standpoint.
and this is a really vital question.
and after considerable discussion we decide that had we wanted to maintain a market match philosophy averaging at the 50th percentile of the market.
in other words, we don't want to lead and whoa don't want to lag the market.
I want to average in the 50th percentile in terms of cash compensation.
we did want to lead the market or have a high market match in terms of our group benefits and then we also wanted to include a focus on wellness initiatives in order to contain some of the costs that go with group benefits.
so ultimately our discussion was we didn't want to lead or lag.
we wanted a key recruitment or retention tool and then use wellness initiatives to make sure that we were controlling the costs that are associated with the group benefits.
>> the second primary area that we discussed was the structure.
certainly the key is in broader compensation with multiple scales for different employee types.
these are extremely common in law enforcement, they're also very common in education, particularly for teachers.
they're also common in the private sector, although getting less so in highly immunized environments where there's a strong especially if sis on seniority.
-- emphasis on seniority.
this particular type of structure has been fading over time.
there aren't nearly as many organizations that use this type of approach anymore.
I don't want to say it's an artifact of the past, but it's definitely something that has lost favor overtime as compensation theory has evolved.
it's been replaced by the open range structure, which is very similar to a grade and step approach, except you don't have the increments sitting there in between the minimum and the maximum.
you move people across the range based on a number of things that can be an across the board increase.
it can be a performance award, it can be just any number of things.
but you don't typically bind it by fixed increments or steps.
another type of system used, although typically in smaller organizations, much maul smaller than this one, is a market approach, where the ranges for each classification are defined essentially by market values.
so in this type of a structure you would go out, you would measure what are the common minimums and maximums and mid points for every type of job that you had and you would set your ranges that way.
and it was not necessarily even necessarily have to be an ordered kind of pay structure.
you could just have essentially a minimum and a maximum for every job and you adjust that and often as you do your market analysis.
one thing about that type of approach, it requires a lot of information collection and it also is not very good at capturing internal equity relationships in an organization where you have an hierarchial structure such as most county departments.
>> you know, with that we hear -- we have addressed it in fact in many instances as we possibly can.
and that is dealing with the red line as far as the end of the line for the employees here.
and of course, they come to a dead end.
they can't go any farther in that.
so they're kind of locked in that situation and of course we hear from employees several times, well, how do we get around that because in fact we've even heard that this may affect person's retirement, a whole bunch of different accounts of the distasteful situation to be at the very end of the pay spectrum.
and what have you looked at that particular situation when it come to those particular employees that are really at the end of the progressive road as far as within that pay grade?
how are we looking at that?
because -- I don't mean to -- but go ahead.
>> well, it's definitely a topic of some discussion although probably not as much as you might think.
there's several different ways of looking at this.
as an employee you're looking at I'm maxed out in my pay grade.
and, you know, that makes me ineligible for certain types of raises.
and if I do get something it's usually in a lump sum and not usually stuck in the base.
and maybe that is a negative thing, but there is the alternative way to iewview this is that the market does set a very definite range of salary values for that particular job.
and basically what this means is that you are being paid the maximum that someone is going to get paid for somebody working in that position.
that's a positive thing.
it's not necessarily a negative thing to be at the top of your pay grade.
and I would argue that there are just -- it's probably a mistake to continue to expand a pay grade wider and wider just to accommodate people who are quote, unquote, maxed out at the top of the grade because then you're going beyond where the market says you ought to be paying these people.
if asked, my answer would be that when you get to that point you have a couple of choices.
you can either hope that the market continues to move and expands out the top and maybe it will and maybe it won't, or you can set about the process of retraining yourself working on progressing upward in the organization rather than trying to move further across the scale that way.
so if you're the best you can be at operating a heavy equipment tractor or something of that nature, those are extremely valuable people to have and you're getting paid at the maximum of your pay grade, perhaps the next step is to develop some supervisory skills and work towards advancing yourselves into a supervisory capacity, which typically tend to pay more.
>> I think that's what Commissioner Gomez said,.
>> upward mobility.
>> she told me the mobility fact he.
I think it's all related to some degree because you do get to that ending point.
and of course, the opportunity to be mobile in something else is something that need to be looked at.
I think Commissioner Gomez hit it right on the head earlier.
I just think it's something that we hear -- I know I hear a lot.
I don't know about the other persons on the court.
>> I think what would help, this would be -- we've emphasized it in the past, having good job training here.
so that our folks can go through that training and be able to promote, get themselves promoted vertically.
that way no one has to wait until they get to the very end and then what am I going to do now that I'm in a dead end position?
>> well, I certainly agree with that and I do agree that one of the most important things that we need to be doing in the future is mapping out the road map for employees and how they can go from one part of the organization to the next.
how can you go from being an employee to a lead employee, how that type of job transitions into a manager, what types of skills you've got to get to take those steps.
and then working with the departments on providing the training so that employees can go ahead and make that type of transition.
certainly not every employee wants to move into management, move into supervisory.
some people are very happy where they're at.
but if you're happy with where you're at, you have to acknowledge that every job has a range.
>> absolutely.
the only thing is I think we were talking about having job training internally.
I don't know how far we got on that.
does anybody know?
>> with regard to job training and vertical mobility, there's only so much a compensation structure can do.
we are a organization with 48 separate elected officials and a number of managerial posts under each of those 48.
so to a great extent we have to rely upon the goodman jeerl skills of -- managerial skills of those 48 and those below them to create that vertical mobility.
we could model good behavior from the Commissioners' court, but I don't think we can mandate it through a compensation structure.
>> I think at best what you could do is look at the availability of training.
I think issues have been presented to you regarding the reimbursement for tuition, those kinds of opportunities, but again, it goes to that discussion of things that are connected to the budget.
and so I think you certainly can fund a robust training program within the county and I would imagine there are several of us on the compensation committee who would be happy to help you do that.
but again, you know, it's another bucket and it's another one of those things that I think the committee would agree that, you know, it's sort of the next step from where we are right now.
>> yeah.
and it's a certain issue with the return on the investment.
you've got to make sure that as you invest more in your workforce that you're seeing a corresponding return in that investment.
and that's something that's not easily measured.
and it's something that is going to take some time to determine, is the return on the investment worth the investment itself?
>> does that bring us to your proposed structure changes on the next page?
>> I will forego the broadbanding discussion except to say that it's a hot trend in compensation, which frankly has not worked very well in the public sector.
>> therefore it's not recommended.
>> it is not.
>> I'm with you.
>> essentially the committee has decided to recommend a structure that's not greatly different from the one that we have today.
we don't think that the pure market approach would work because I think our organization is too large.
and the internal equity relationships are too important to try a pure market approach.
we don't think the broadband solution would work.
it would require a great deal of time and investment to try to get that right, and frankly we want to do something that's quicker and has a better proven track record.
and we're not overly fond of the grade and step method because it's a very rigid system where people progress-- you go from one step to the next, one step to the next, and frankly it's tied very much into tenure rather than it is performance.
so basically we prefer the open range approach, and then we asked ourselves if we're going to have an open range approach, how many different types of scales should we have?
and finally the decision was made to basically extract our executive level employees, and I'm not just talking about county executives here, I'm going beyond that into department heads and assistant department heads or deputy directors.
and essentially extracting them from the current classified scale into their own scale.
putting the rest of the classified employees basically in the same scale they're in today.
and since we weren't really authorize to deal with the pops employees and it's very common to have grade and step approach, to just leave them in the system that they're in today.
and the reason for this is that we wanted for the Commissioners to be able to differentiate how they approach compensating that executive level employee as they're making the key decisions that make the organization succeed or fail.
and granted, it's a team effort and everybody has got to work for it to succeed, but basically speaking, if your top executives are not making good decisions, the probability of the organization failing in its mission goes up dramatically.
so we want to be able to allow the Commissioners to differentiate how they go about rewarding their executive employees versus the non-executives who are on the classified scale.
and so the proposal is to have instead of one classified scale, is to have basically two, one for executives and one for non-executives.
and then allowing the Commissioners to set the parameters for how employees on both types of scales progress across the scale.
>> and that brought us to the issue of how often should we be updating our scales.
and frankly it was very surprising to me when it first got here to find out that we didn't really have a system.
we don't have anything in policy at the moment that tells us how often we should be examining our classified pay scale and how often we should be updating it.
basically it's been done on a very ad hoc fashion.
and our proposal is that the pay scale should be examined every fourth year in conjunction with a comprehensive classification and compensation study and any adjustments to the classified scale should be made at that time.
we would like to see that fixed in the policy so that we don't have the question continually come up on how often should we be doing this.
basically this is going to connect our examination of the scale to our examination of the overall compensation and classified system itself.
and in the whole process will turn into a very cyclical type of procedure.
>> why four years?
why not every two or every five?
how do we arrive at four?
>> two years -- I've certainly seen places that not only update it every two years, but some does do it every year.
and my experience with those is that if you're updating the scale too often, you're going to end up with a system where, say you update the scale two percent and you're giving out a common two percent increase.
those people who were at the minimum of the scale at the beginning move two percent, but the scale moves two percent.
and if you keep moving the scale too often, there's never any penetration in the range.
you want to have enough time pass so that people can progress across the range and not always stuck in the same place.
on the other hand, if you wait too long -- and I would argue that five years is on the cusp of being too long.
you will end up with minimums and maximums that become outdated and uncompetitive.
so you wanttology out and recruit an employee and maybe you have budgeted that they'll come in at the minimum of the pay grade, but you haven't moved the minimum of that pay grade for five years, the minimum of your pay grade will be outdated and you will have a difficult time recruiting people.
so four years was I think the right increment.
could it be three?
it could conceivably be three, but our argument is four years would allow you to do cross-sectional studies, if you will, market analysis in the intervening years.
and it would also have less of an administrative burden than to do a common class study every three years, which is a very pronounced effort.
>> my question next time will be what are the best practices in this area based on what similar public and private employers do?
your explanation maybe the same, but what are your explanations and why.
I can wait two weeks to get the answer.
>> as the forerunner, the most -- probably the most common thing that I've seen is that those organizations that update every year, and it's the most common, but I'm not going to say it's the best practice.
I think it has its detriments.
we'll get into that two weeks from now.
>> okay.
>> strategy area 3 is pay equity.
there's a very pronounced trend here towards combining internal equity and external equity considerations into a comprehensive classification system.
and then maintaining that system through benchmark analysis.
and we had a number of questions that we asked ourselves starting basically with what's the difference between internal equity and external equity.
what's the best way to measure those things?
what's the best way to combine them?
how often should we be conducting our market studies?
and what's the best way to monitor in between those comprehensive studies.
how to define the market and what do we do about that issue of compression that I know the Commissioners have heard a number of times over the years?
let's start with internal equity.
that you can think of as comparing the relative value of jobs with the other jobs within the same organization.
so how do you value or how does the county value, let's say, an accounting clerk versus a human resources specialist.
highway do you go about comparing those things?
how do you go about comparing the work of those two jobs to the organization itself?
external equity involves comparing the relative value of any jobs to similar jobs in the labor force.
and this is probably the thing that most people think of when they think of a market study or a compensation study.
how does my job compare to the surrounding areas and labor market.
the philosophy suggests that both of these are important end goals, and that the compensation strategy needs to include both components.
I would say that the county has done a relatively good job historically of measuring external equity.
it really has developed a fairly sophisticated market analysis type of approach for external equity.
the approach that we use for internal equity, however, is very non-quantifiable.
it's not empirical.
it depends upon historic relationships that have been established either through agreement or political compromise.
not typically the way it's done in the marketplace today.
currently we do analysis of a third of our jobs in a given year, then we do the second third and then we do the third-third.
and those jobs that are not scheduled for a market survey, they're done on typically an emergency basis or an ad hoc basis, our internal equity has been checked through historic benchmarks, and basically the process of combining internal and external equity analysis, it typically has been very separate.
the proposed approach is to do all the jobs within a given year and then have a time increment pass we say every fourth year we would repeat this process, but in the intervening years we would do a benchmark survey of jobs, approximately 75 jobs, to determine which way the labor market has gone and to catch any pronounced movement that may be taking place within given job areas.
and then adjusting accordingly.
the internal equity we would propose using a point factor system where essentially you are assessing the value of the jobs based upon how a job measures in terms of what are called compensable factors and those could be things such as education, decision making -- I wouldn't count experience as one of those.
how much budget you control.
it could be just a number of different quantifiable factors.
essentially you combine those scores and you end up with a total point value for every job.
and then jobs with similar point values you could say are essentially equal.
and by suggestion would be more than likely either in the exact same grade or very close to each other.
once you've gone about determining the point factor scores for each of your jobs and you have your market data, then you can take each one of those things and use its statistical technique called regression and regress the midpoint value of the market versus your point factor scores, and that gives you a projected value for the midpoint for every job within the organization.
so you have a hierarchy of jobs that gets created depending upon what the value of that regression score comes out to be, and that is where you place your jobs within your pay scale.
the overall issue of how you define the market, the non-executive jobs, historically we looked at major Texas counties and cities, local and regional, and there's really nothing wrong with this approach.
it looks at the private sector as well as the public sector, but we had obviously a lot of jobs in the public sector that don't exist in the private sector because if they existed in private sector, there's a profit to be made the private sector companies would probably be doing them.
basically we decided that that approach was really fine.
that there wasn't a need to make a substantial change to that.
the executive jobs, probably the national public sector is probably the most valid thing to look at.
you can look at regional and national peers in both the public and private sector.
it's sometimes difficult to get really good data from private sector when you start getting into the executive level.
they don't tend to give out precise figures.
and basically the theory here is that the more responsibility a job has and the more you get paid for it it, or you might any of the higher up you go in the pay scale, you should be expanding out the labor market.
because typically your search is going to get broader the more responsible the position comes.
you could look for a county executive all across the country, and you might even do that, but more than likely you're not going to use the entire country as your labor market for a street sweeper or a locksmith or a job of that nature.
so basically the less responsibility and the less pay the job has typically the narrower the labor market would be.
and we get to the issue of compression.
and compression results when employees move up in pay grade as a result of a market study, but they don't move up to an extent to account for the difference between pay grades, so if you have an employee who is sitting -- let's say the first quartertile of pay grade 10 and you find it should be valued in pay grade 12, that's really the proper range for that position f you move that employee into pay grade 12, if you don't give that person a substantial enough increase, what's going to happen is they're going toned up at the minimum of the new pay grade rather than the first quarter.
subsequently in the past while Travis County has done I think a very decent scrob of figuring out where the -- a decent job of figuring out where the market; we have used the formula in the past which gives out an insufficient increase amount to keep the existing levels of equity in place.
in other words, it's very common for Travis County for a job to go up two pay grades and an employee to only get a one or two percent increase.
and while I can certainly understand that from a budget perspective, the fact of the matter is you're going to end up with an awful lot of employees sitting at the very bottom of the pay scale and you will have employees who have worked for the county or five or six or seven years at the minimum of the pay scale, the same as somebody who just came in the day before.
and this has been a very common problem in the county.
you can offset that by making the award for a pay grade more in line with the differences between the pay grades themselves.
now, most of the pay grades in Travis County are seven percent at the midpoint.
and the recommendation of the committee is that if you go up a pay grade, say you go from 10 to 11, you would receive a five percent per grade award as a result of the market study.
this isn't a complete comparable ratio approach, since the full would be a seven percent, but essentially the five percent gets you close enough that you're able to keep that internal spacing or distance between employees as a result of the market study, and it's also very consistent with what the county has done in terms of promotion, where it's very common to see a five percent per grade promotion take place for employees.
>> it all says the advantage of mirroring the demotion policy, correct?
>> it would.
although currently or promotion and demotion policies are not exact mirrors.
>> is that advantageous to have them -- from an equity standpoint is it advantageous to have your promotion and demotion policies mirror one another?
>> I think for the sake of consistency they should.
>> you've said that this is a good place to start next time?
>> if you say so, judge, absolutely.
>> are we about halfway through.
>> this is the last strategy --
>> not to cut todd off, but this is fascinating stuff and I want to be able to give it 100% of my energy and attention.
>> we can take that cue.
if I just might close by acknowledging the committee, our chairs present, jim collins, so I want to acknowledge him.
and a lot of work was done by a lot of dedicated Travis County employees that you appointed to this committee.
so I want you to know that they served you well.
>> thank you.
>> we appreciate the outstanding work.
>> 30 seconds.
as the chair, at the end of the process -- not the chair at the beginning, but the chair at the end of the process, I want to echo what sherri has said and tell you that the committee worked incredibly hard.
for reasons that will become apparent on 28, I've been part of the presentation of either the strategy or the policy, but I want you to know that as chair of that committee I wholeheartedly endorse the recommendations that the committee has made.
and should any of you have questions at any point, I'm happy to contribute what I can about answering them.
but begun, your committee did a phenomenal job of working through this, and I was very pleased with them.
>> also I wanted to say to the committee, I won't be here on the 28th, but it's really been an amazing process and I've followed closely what has occurred in the committee as well as the recommendations that are going to come forward on the 28 the.
and I'm really quite blown away at the breadth and the depth of the analysis and the consensus that's been achieved.
>> so when we look at the document that we will follow in the presentation, every time we see a proposed approach, we should think recommendation from the committee.
>> recommendation, yes.
>> okay.
now, there is a document entitled compensation document?
>> yes.
that's a detailed strategy document that was sent out as part of the backup.
we see the presentation as a summary.
so if there is any area that you would want to dig deeper, then I would go to that word document.
>> so this document is just supplemental information that goes along with the presentation that's on the front part of it.
>> yes, sir.
>> yes.
it's a deeper dive into how we arrived at all of this that we're presenting.
>> we're posted today just to receive the previousing.
should we just be posted for a briefing to complete the presentation two weeks from today?
then an action item a week or two later?
>> that would be fine with us, judge, to have an action item a week or two later, I think, unless hrmd has a different recommendation compared to other work that they would want to do.
so we'll let you know that by agenda setting.
>> okay.
that will be fine.
thank y'all very much.
>> thank you for the good report.
>> now, there's another quick item that really could have been part of the consent motion today.
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