[NCASG] [External] WV Questions

[Marro, Joe]

Good afternoon, Wendy. Please see below. I hope this is helpful. Happy Friday!  -Joe

From: Elswick, Wendy A <Wendy.A.Elswick at wv.gov>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:06 AM
To: dhr_ncasg_survey_list at admws.idaho.gov
Subject: [External] [NCASG] WV Questions

CAUTION: External email. Do not click links or open attachments unless you verify. Send all suspicious email as an attachment to report.spam at nc.gov<mailto:report.spam at nc.gov>

Good morning from West Virginia,

I hope everyone is staying safe.  I have a few questions, and if you could respond to me by July 6, 2020 that would be awesome:


  1.  Has your state changed or implemented a new classification and/or compensation system?
Like Louisiana, we also implemented our new class/comp system in 2018. We reduced the number of job classifications from ~2,400 to the current level of ~1,400. (I am somewhat in awe of the consolidations that North Dakota is undertaking.)  At that time we introduced some new salary administration concepts and guidelines. Neville Kenning provided consulting support to North Carolina up to that point. Since then, we've granted significant salary administration and classification flexibility (formerly called delegation of authority) to State agencies. Immediately following the system implementation in mid-2018, we knew we wanted to look very closely at our market pricing practices from a total compensation perspective; i.e., philosophy, base pay, bonuses, pay supplements/incentives, policies/practices, survey utilization, salary structure designs, benefits analysis, program relationships between agencies and the university system, etc., etc. [If I were a radio host, this is where I would be teasing up the next segment to follow after the commercial break or, in this case, question 2.]


  1.  Did you do it internal?  Or did you contract with a firm/agency to assist?
We contracted with Mercer. State leadership gave us an extremely aggressive schedule for project completion, starting late in 1Q2019 and a goal to finish all of the above by early 3Q2019. Stop laughing; I can hear you. And yes, the project was enormous and is ongoing through no fault of ours or the consultant. Factoring in organizational politics, pandemics, scope creep, and my Class/Comp team's unwavering attention to detail, we are now expecting to wrap up in 3Q2020. We and Mercer are still on budget per our contract, and we anticipate delivering better results than had we actually tried to do all of that in the original span of <9 months.

Over 70% of our positions are now market-priced and we are seeking to increase that by another 10-15% within the next 18-24 months. Translation: look for more NC surveys in your mailbox in the future. We plan to implement four new competitively market-based salary structures in early 2021. Throughout our project with Mercer, we have been laying the foundation to build and implement a formal career framework starting in 2021 that includes participation by OSHR, state agencies and universities. We've been busy reconfirming and validating preliminary job architecture elements (e.g., function, family, branch, career stream, career level). We will be executing a plan for mapping employees to the new career framework to ensure consistency in career levels across the state, as well as define eligibility guidelines for compensation programs, including ongoing accurate alignment of jobs to the salary structures. Our ultimate goal is to identify critical jobs/areas and create paths (movement, feeder jobs, experiences) to support and strengthen our talent management programs.

Over an approximate three year timeframe, we expect the UNC system to be migrated away from their current career banding structure and transitioned into the same class/comp system we implemented for the state agencies. We found that broad bands allow for flexibility and for individual development and progression within banded classes. However, the primary challenge to broad bands is that the flexibility can lead to inequity. In our world, many banded classes include a wide variety of unique positions, making it difficult to understand the true responsibilities and manage changes in the market pricing of roles within a banded class. Other than some university-specific classes, Mercer identified many cases where UNC jobs are consistent with jobs across the agencies and share general industry market matches. Therefore, it seemed most logical for us to align them with our new market-based salary structures: 1) due to the challenges of keeping bands true to market, 2) administrative responsibilities and costs common to broad bands, and 3) opening up more meaningful and transparent career path opportunities between our agencies and universities within the new career framework.

Why am I telling you all of this? I know that was quite a long road to take you down but I felt it was necessary to explain (ok, defend) why we engaged with a consulting firm to assist. Oops, spoiler alert for question 3.


  1.  If your state contracted with a firm or an agency, can you tell me why you chose to contract and not perform the change internally?

Size, scope and complexity of the project and, to quote Janelle, "an outside consultant helps bring additional validity to our internal process."


  1.  Have any of you moved away from or to a point factor system?  Can you tell me why?
No, we do not have a point factor system and are not looking to implement one.

Thank you guys so much for all of your help!!!

Stay safe!!

Wendy Elswick
Assistant Director, Classification and Compensation

________________________________

Email correspondence to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties by an authorized state official.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://admws.idaho.gov/pipermail/dhr_ncasg_survey_list/attachments/20200626/f5b230d0/attachment-0001.html>