City Manager's Messages

All, 

I am writing to update you on the pay and classification study. You may recall that last month I shared concerns that the management team and I had with the initial findings from the consultant which had some jobs being reclassified into lower pay ranges. Like you, I was not expecting this. Although this would not have decreased anyone’s pay, we were nevertheless concerned that lower pay ranges could have a negative impact on our ability to attract and retain a quality workforce. Thus, we wanted to have more time to understand the data and rationale for those findings and to deliberate with our contractor. We opted to delay the planned briefings until this month to do that. Since that time Human Resources, the Assistant City Managers, and I have worked through these issues with the consultant. Although we do not have a final report, I believe the work that has been done on the benchmark positions and the new pay scales is ready for Council and employee briefing. 

Accordingly, tomorrow afternoon at the 1 p.m. Council work session, the consultant and our Human Resources Director will make a presentation to Council outlining the process of the study and proposed implementation. We will review sample benchmark positions and explain how the market data gathered from these benchmarks was/is used to make pay scale placement decisions for all jobs currently in the City’s Pay Plan. This session will be televised, streamed on the internet and is available for rebroadcast. 

Also, as I previously committed, Nicole and I will offer employee information sessions beginning this Thursday. The schedule for the information sessions is below. 

• Thursday, January 28: 9am to 11am - General Workforce Briefing 
• Friday, January 29: 9am to 11am - Public Safety Briefing 
• Friday, January 29: 2:30pm to 4:30pm - General Workforce Briefing  
• Monday, February 1: 1pm to 3pm - Public Safety Briefing
• Tuesday, February 2: 8:30am to 10:30am - Social Services Briefing 
• Thursday, February 4:9am to 11am - Public Safety Briefing 
• Friday, February 5: 2pm to 4pm - General Workforce Briefing

All sessions except the Social Services session will be held in the Council Chambers so we can accommodate as many employees as possible. However, even with the use of the Council Chambers, we do have space limitations for each session, so please contact Donna Hodges to sign-up for a session if you are interested in attending a briefing. Please be sure your supervisor approves the time you select to attend a briefing. We will be making video recordings for employees who are not able to attend one of these sessions. 

The briefing schedule includes three types of sessions - those for the general workforce, those for public safety and one specifically designated for Social Services. We are setting up separate sessions so that we can go into more depth for the different work groups. If we were to do all types of employees in one session, we would be more limited as to how many examples we could use. Anyone can attend any session; however, public safety sessions will only focus on police and fire positions and the Social Services session will only focus on the jobs in our Human Services Department. The general workforce session will cover the positions in other city departments. 

As a reminder, the briefings will cover the pay scale phase of the study. This is only one part of our implementation program. The goal of this phase is to place the pay scales appropriately in the market - at or above the regional average. For employees who fall below the new minimum of the range, a pay adjustment will be made in March retroactive to January as previously committed. This will temporarily compression (or the bundling of people at or near the minimum) temporarily. Once this phase is complete, we will finalize a compression reduction strategy. Compression adjustments - which will feather people out within ranges based on time in position - will be made in July, 2016 on schedule.   

As we roll out this information over the next two weeks, please do not hesitate to contact Human Resources, your department head or me if you have questions or concerns.