Travis County Commissioners Court
August 17, 2004
Item 26
26-a is to discuss and take appropriate action on fy '04 job analysis project, part iii-a, recommended job titles, pay grades, flsa designations, supplemental pay rates and practices. And I thought you were doing -- (indiscernible).
>> that's correct.
>> that's not part of this?
>> no. 26-a is to discuss and take appropriate action on fy 2004 job analysis project, part about a, b is to discuss and take appropriate action on fy '04 job analysis project, part 3-b.
>> good morning Commissioners. We will start with the part 3 a and b, which will complete the -- except for the court reporters, be most of the fy '04 job analysis project. Court reporters has been postponed. We need more discussion with the district judges or with the judges overall and also with the court on this particular issue, so we'll bring that back. So we will take you to the backup on page 2 to the senior management job family and then the public safety and e.m.s. Job family. Linda, we'll turn it over to you.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners. Linda morris, director of human resources. With us today is bob cartwright and we will hear from a little bit later the consultant who worked with part 3-b. And as we all know, sue anne. You have as part of your backup, the golden rod color has been sort of the color for hr. The sheet you have before you are the titles pay grade, flsa designations that we will be bringing to you today. As she indicated, the court reporter job title has been postponed. We're in the process now of scheduling meetings as she indicated, and those meetings will be held we're hoping by the end of this week with anticipation coming back to you within the next week or so with the court reporter job family. As indicated by the agenda posting, we're bringing to you as we have throughout the last couple of months recommendations on pay grades, titles, as well as the fsla designations as noted. This is pretty much a cleanup report. We have in the senior management, middle management title, a title such as manager that we recognize as a department needed to be reviewed as a part of this particular project. We're recommending that the budget manager's pay grade, which is currently a 24, be moved to a pay grade 29. The flsa exemption remains exempt. And of course, one slot is affected by this. And as you'll see on your goldenrod sheet, there's not a fiscal impact associated with this, but basically puts this particular title into the appropriate job family.
>> I’m sorry, does that take that person out of being (indiscernible)?
>> it will,. If it would remove red lining, that would be great.
>> it does. If there are no other questions on that particular title, that title will join other titles that were included in the senior middle management title that you approved back in may.
>> and the other thing too, though, it's not only removed from red lining, but it's because of additional duties.
>> yes, the additional duties, the scope of the duties of the individual merited that examination and the pay grade 29 recommended. We're very comfortable with that, as we do in all of our studies, we examine positions for not only external market, but also internal equity. There were positions that we looked at within this family that clearly this position paralleled those that you have already approved, such as basically department directors and upper management level positions. So we have met with the department. The department is well aware of the recommendation that's being made. They provided input and therefore we feel that this recommendation is appropriate for your consideration today. The other job family is the public safety emergency management. You'll see there that we have a number of starflight positions that are affected. The pay grade in general are all going up. I could certainly run through them, but you have them there before you in terms of what they are now and what they're going to. So we do have upward changes in the pay grades, up to nine positions that are before you. Most relevant to this particular area and the results of it is the fact that four of these nine positions are transitioning from the fsla status of exempt to the status of nonexempt. We have extensively reviewed this particular change. We reviewed the fair labor standards act as well as the legislation that specifically relates to aviation and know and feel very confident that the movement of these four positions to nonexempt status is the appropriate and legal thing to do, legally compliant thing to do. What this does mean is that these additional four positions will be eligible for overtime pay. And I think we talked with you about what that means in terms of possible budget implications, the amount of dollars perhaps that a department may have dedicated to overtime pay. We've met with the department, we've talked very extensively with them in terms of the potential implications of these four positions moving to that status. We're moving with them related to training on how best to manage the overtime as well as the policy exception that you've grated, the straight time pay for holiday hours' work that could potentially have an impact budgetarily. Donnie hobby has indicated and so has mr. Cull berson and mr. Pane that they have reporting in place that will monitor this, and within a six-month period of time will be reporting that information out in terms of overtime accumulation and any kind of adjustment that might need to be done as a result of this change.
>> can you ask casey, since he's here, if he were to go back and look at like the last couple of years if the fees would have gone -- what impact that would have just so we would have an idea? Is that something, casey, that you would by chance have with you or off the top of your head?
>> I know previously the starflight pilots that we're talking about were they got additional street time for additional work. So if they had a late call, for example, where they got off late, they would get additional straight time off. So the difference we're talking about is only the half-time because they've gotten the additional straight time. I could give you a rough number. I think we put it in the budget, which we can talk about tomorrow in the work session, but I think it was an additional around $30,000 for the whole department in overtime. That's the additional half-time. We spent last year about $70,000 in the overtime line item, so we just used that as -- the straight time were just given the extra half-time.
>> and if you know that there is a set budget and have to manage within it, it's kind of like with the sheriff's office, you have to manage your overtime resources, and that is something that your performance is measured upon.
>> absolutely. And some of that is discretionary and some is non-discretionary. There are things that you can do, but a late call and those types of things, one emergency business and we expect them to take the emergency responses regardless if it will put thm past their normal shift change. We will have a breakdown. We've worked with hr extensively about being able to present a report on seeing where exactly the overtime expenditures are. And from that we can look at where we have some discretionary decisions about where to apply that overtime and not to apply it.
>> thank you.
>> remind me the criteria we use to determine whether a certain position is exempt or unexempt.
>> the fair labor standards act provides the rulings on what we apply to make that determination. You may have specific information on the aviational end.
>> three tests that are possible, one is administrative, second is executive, in this case we use a professional test, and then a series of questions that you answer. And if you answer one to be nonexempt, then you turn the position into being nonexempt. And there's other court cases that we've looked at and other sources of documentation and working with the county attorney's office that that's our determination on the test.
>> okay. So really it's law.
>> it's law.
>> it's like worker's comp tells you -- I had that with umpires and I wanted to use them as contract labors and they said no. You tell us where to show up and what to wear. We're employees.
>> and so it's federal legislation and they're pretty hefty penalties that are associated with not appropriately designated an employee as such. I think allen has some supplemental information.
>> the budget includes $41,600 in overtime plus benefits for the pilots, assuming you approve the action of making them nonexempt.
>> so that, judge and Commissioners, completes part 3-b of the posted item with the exception of (indiscernible) that we'll be coming back to you with. I don't know if you wanted to split the actions on a and b or have us move it.
>> so on b you're covering the management positions and the starflight.
>> yes.
>> move approval of the recommendations.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you. And with the exception of the court reporters, which we'll come back to you in a couple of weeks, that really completes all the fy '04 job analysis. And we'll move on now to the hr, the human resources market salary survey. Linda, do you want to introduce bob?
>> I indicated earlier that we have bob cartwright with us, who is a senior professional in human resources. Early on when we contracted with mr. Cartwright, I shared with you some of his background and credentials. A long time compensation manager at motorola who is now in private practice, has done extensive amount of work with county governments in the area as well as outside the area, and city government, in addition to private sector compensation-related work. We're real pleased and have had real good relationship with the department, but he will share with you the collaborative efforts he also had with departments around the county as he took a look at titles in the hr job family. Just to remind the court that you authorized us to contract this work out so that hr department, whose titles are included in this job family, would not be conditioning our re-- with that i'll turn it over to bob. Lou anne will be operating the powerpoint and I have a copy of his report that i'll pass around. Bob?
>> are some of those positions that you'll be covering off on the green sheet on page 5 and 6? Okay.
>> judge and Commissioners, I appreciate the opportunity to be before you this morning and I’m very pleased to present to you the final recommendations that we have regarding the hr job family and job titles throughout Travis County. Let's go to the next slide if we can. One of the things i'd like to point out to you is the fact that we were very conscious of the Travis County compensation philosophy and how you go about doing your business in terms of the county and the organizations. I also want to look at the project overview and methodology that we took to determine our final recommendations. We conducted staff interviews and utilizing position analysis questionaires and we audited those questionaires with each of the departments that had hr titles within them. We identified a benchmark positions to be compared with survey data and we conducted external market analysis which went through a number of different survey sources, including various and sundry counties, wattson wyatt and morseer and others to make sure we covered the bases in terms of what those salaries would be and to compare them appropriately based on the position analysis questionaires and job descriptions to ensure that our correct. We conducted the market analysis with internal equity review. We were very conscious of how positions were aligned in the organization not only from the hr perspective, but also have the standpoint of other positions within the county that would be comparable to the hr positions we would be looking at. Very clear in terms of the compensation philosophy and policies of the county that the market as well as internal equity is very important to your organization, so we wanted to make sure we captured that. Before you today we're here with the job classifications recommendations and proposed job families. What we found was we had a lot of once si and two si positions that were part of your organization, so based on compensation practice that i've utilized over the years, we really looked at the demarcation between different positions, from an entry level to intermediate to senior to a specialist so that we were capturing what you would find in the marketplace in terms of comparable positions, so you can continue to remain competitive of trying to track those sources and resources. With that i'll be showing you what we're proposing to be minimum qualification changes in terms of some of these positions, which if you go into a number -- an array of compensation surveys, you will find that these minimal qualifications are representative throughout and very similar to what we're proposing today. And then i'd also like to present to you some next steps that I see based on what we found with our analysis that might prove to be helpful to you going forward. Lou anne?
>> your compensation philosophy is very sound. The quality service talented workforce that will be attracted and retained through competitive and progressive compensation system. We looked at this very closely because we really feel like it's important that our final recommendations reflect what you have here. Next one, please. But the premise that we used is through the job analysis, looking at job descriptions. We looked at two approaches to combine them and come back to. We looked at the labor market data collection on the jobs, matched up the job descriptions with the survey market data. Did a job content evaluation based on that. And then reconciled that information to review both internal and external considerations related I think in our final recommendations. With that the green sheets that you have before you represent the job classification levels and pay structure that we're recommending to you today. We gathered and analyzed existing job data via the the minimum qualifications, we looked at competitive salary positions in the marketplace. We re evaluated job responsibility and requirements and spent tight quite a bit of time with each of the departments that had hr related job title soz that we reflected what the current paq's were and so ensure that that information was updated accordingly so that we were current with what we were going forward with. We reevaluated the job comparisons and internal equity and based on that information bought forth from the different departments as well as from the market analysis, we conducted a job (indiscernible) to ensure from an internal equity standpoint as well as reflective of the marketplace that we were on target with that information. From there we updated the structures, looking at the job hierarchy and classification matrix and before you as I mentioned is our recommendations for salary grades and the salary ranges. We did staff interviews with the sheriff's department, donna hart, (indiscernible). The hr staff in terms of the immediate organization outside of the hr titles, so that I had a good sounding board, if you will, in terms of the internal equity positions, of other positions within so that I wasn't going off on the deep end in sermz of some new information that I wanted to provide with you today. And they were very helpful in giving any sort of a balance in terms of what those positions would be and having to match it with the hr positions. From that we conducted the preliminary results that we had. We went with the -- met with the various departments again and their management teams. We solicited their input and the actions to our preliminary results. And from that got feedback from them to go forward and to look at considerations. One example is the sheriff's department and some of their positions where they wanted to potentially reclassify some of the positions from a nonexempt to the exempt level status. As linda and allow anne have mentioned before, one of those argues is the fair labor standards act. Based on those tests for administrative positions found that we really felt like they were still nonexempt positions. Similarly what we've looked at are the management positions, and this was also in the area where there was self-interest in terms -- some interest in terms of discussion. Some of the management we broke down into two levels. One is hr management at one level and the other is an hr management 2 level. The hr management 2 level is basically like a senior hr manager that has a lot of responsibility from a scope standpoint, organization size and so on, that reflects the number of employees within the organization, reflects the budget size of the organization, reflects reporting relationship, job responsibilities and so on so that we accurately depicted where those demarcations were. And what we utilized was an employee sort of cut between the senior hr manager versus the hr manager 1 level. Lou anne. The positions reviewed, I’m not going to go through all of them, but there were quite a few. There were 49 positions. What we started with was I think was 48 and we ended up with 49 based on the recommendations we have in terms of the hr job families. And then also have you look at the green sheets that you have before you, which are basically the compensation analysis results. Outcomes, we restructured job families, titles, revised position requirements, revised job classification, pay greadz and salary ranges. We made sure that we were flsa compliant in terms of the review of the positions and then revised job descriptions based on -- are revising job descriptions based on the new families and job requirements. In terms of relooked at 49 positions, there were no changes to five. There were no down grades in the analysis. The majority of the upgrades were one or two pay grades, which represented 33 positions. Five at three pay grade adjustments, four at four pay grades. There were five at five pay grades. There were one. The total in terms of cost impact was $19,928.93. The proposed job families and grades that we have in place or that we're recommending are reflected in the next sheet. As you'll notice, we have two levels of hr assistance or actually three levels. We have benefit assistance that we've included as a new title. Hr specialist versus hr analyst. What we found was there were really two lines in the organization. One was more of an hr generalist type scenario, which we titled the hr specialist that included employment relations, some payroll responsibilities, benefit responsibilities and so on. Whereas the analyst position, these were really people whorl actually doing the analysis work from a professional standpoint, including such as compensation, benefits analysis and so on. And so we kind of split those two positions because it really was reflective of two specific categories, if you will, in terms of the hr family. The rest of it speaks for itself in terms of risk and safety. Hr financial, training and education coordinators and so on is reflective with what you had in place already. This is basically a proposed minimum job qualification scenario that we would like to present before you. It really represents the marketplace in terms of how the marketplace reviews and looks at jobs and to match up accordingly would be to your benefit because you're basically talking apples to apples in terms of requirements versus trying to fit sometimes information that may not be on target with what the marketplace is bearing. If you're really truly looking at marketplaces, one of your key compensation components as well as equity, it's important to match up to the marketplace as close as possible. That's what we've done in the job family analysis is tried do that. The short-term relations that we would have for you is to continue to move in the direction to align with the external marketplace in order to stay competitive. As was reflected a few years back in the high-tech boom it was very difficult, from what I understand, for you to recruit and retain people. I'd like to commend the hr staff as well as the Commissioners court for having the foresight to do a compensation strategic plan three years ago because I think it's really proved to be very beneficial to you. And what I would do from that standpoint is develop a new three-year compensation strategic initiative going forward in 2005 because if with the changes you will be faced with comparable scenarios that you were faced with five years ago. And to look at a total compensation strategy as opposed to a base compensation strategy. How that could apply back to rewards and compensation. So I would really suggest that you could look at that going forward. To continue to update the compensation program, i'd also from a long-term perspective develop total compensation performance management strategy. That includes base pay, incentives, rewards and recognitions. The federal government is moving in this direction as long as with state government from performance initiatives and from that standpoint we're being insightful on a three-year plan a few years ago, this might be a really good opportunity to move forward as well. Again, I can't stress enough to maintain the ability to retain and attract employees. Good employees means good business and so from that standpoint, it's an important piece. To reward employees based on measured performance and for the contribution to the success of the organization, which we placed the value of results and rewards. Often times we look at what we would consider as entitlements to employees for just being here and showing up. I think somewhere down the road it would be helpful for you to look at the total compensation strategy, including the performance management piece and reward accordingly. Are there any questions?
>> yes. The federal guidelines that you mentioned about performance initiative, does our staff have access to that?
>> I plan to provide that information.
>> i'd like to see those and see what is included in those.
>> there's a lot of benchmarking and matrix that are being developed in that area in terms of how to measure your workforce.
>> how are those tied back to the public, which I guess is at all levels?
>> results. Here's where we were, here's what we want to be. It basically aligns your organization and focuses your organization to drive to the results that you wish to achieve. And to reward accordingly. So it's a measured process as well as looking at the content of the job, the competencies and skills and such that are being brought to the table by employees that represent those jobs.
>> yeah. And I know those are important, but I guess what I wanted to see was what about measuring the service --
>> exactly. That's part of it.
>> from people being paid well?
>> I can provide that information.
>> especially if they're competent in those fields. Are those part of the performance initiatives?
>> yes, ma'am, that's what i've seen.
>> i'd like to see those. And especially because I think we've worked real hard on our philosophy, and as you know, people of Travis County will receive quality service from the dedicated and diverse workforce.
>> the service is always the key piece in the puzzle in terms of performance management. The others is how well you manage your budgets and operations and so on. And there are some key metrics that you can look at as well related to that. I think it would be have been beneficial to you going forward.
>> just to remind the court that this statement links with the initiative that you have already approved for the performance management system that we're working behind the scenes with now. But then you'll be hearing much more about that in the next month or so. We're really tracking to what industry as well as the consultant has suggested as the next step, to define the criteria to measure that and to reward accordingly. If there are no other questions, staff is bringing to you the recommendation to approve part 3-b, which is a consultant recommendation and the hr family.
>> (indiscernible).
>> that would be the motion if appropriate?
>> motion to approve by Commissioner son lighter. Sonleitner. Seconded by Commissioner Daugherty. So approval of this motion means that we modify -- we're looking at the recommended pay raise. And what about the funding.
>> and titles. Recommended pay raise and titles. The funding will be -- it's really the pleasure of the court. I believe that that is one of the options in terms of the flexibility of the departments to use the 5.75 percent, that there will be allocated. That's as part of the fy '05. We're putting that as one of the options. Unless the court wishes to address this another way.
>> to work on the green circles. In this case we have eight green circles out of 49. And to get to minimum it's 19.9, not including that. It's kind of a modest number.
>> and this would be rolled into, of course, all of the green circles that we'll talk about on Friday and get back to you.
>> so when I look at these green pages, they're a result of the process that you've outlined and what you've discovered.
>> that's correct.
>>
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
passed unanimously with Commissioner Gomez abstaining.
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Last Modified:
Friday, October 28, 2005 8:37 AM