Issued By: Human Resources
Effective Date: July 2003, February 2008
Every job at The College of St. Scholastica is important and every employee should be fairly compensated for his/her contributions. The College's compensation objectives are to:
- Maintain a compensation program that is career-oriented and pays salaries competitive with those paid for similar work in the market place;
- Maintain a compensation program that helps attract, motivate and retain a well-qualified and diverse workforce; and
- Assure that an individual's pay recognizes sustained performance and contributions to the College.
This diagram shows how the elements of compensation work together to determine a salary that is both internally equitable and externally competitive.
Salary Surveys
The College participates in periodic external salary surveys to help maintain a compensation program that is competitive year to year. In these surveys, the median pay of benchmark jobs is gathered from colleges or businesses where similar work is performed and is drawn from local, regional, statewide, and national data. Benchmarks for most hourly jobs are matched locally since we compete locally for these employees.
The key responsibilities from the job description provide the primary match. Job titles are seldom used to match positions as they can vary substantially from place to place.
Understanding Job Classes and Pay Bands
All staff positions are categorized into one of four distinct job classifications:
- Technical (T) - positions that exclusively maintain computer software or hardware
- Institutional Support (IS) - positions that perform business functions
- Student Support (SS) - positions that generally provide direct support to students
- Office and Administrative (OA) - positions that provide support to a department
Within each job classification, there are multiple pay bands.
Once the competitive survey data for jobs is determined, the median pay for similar work determines within which pay band a job is placed.
The minimum of the pay band is the lowest salary that should be paid for a given position; the midpoint is the rate of pay that a fully-qualified, fully-competent performer could reasonably expect to earn in the competitive marketplace for the same job or one requiring comparable skills and abilities; and the maximum is the highest salary the organization is willing to pay for a given position. The pay range covers the possible pay levels an employee can attain within a particular band of comparably-paid jobs. Having a broad pay range allows an employee to have higher earning potential as performance improves. Following is more detail on where individuals may be positioned within their pay band based on many factors (see table):
Supervisors know in which job classification and pay band the positions that report to them are placed and will share that information with direct reports. Should an employee be interested in pursuing a new position, Human Resources can provide relevant salary information.