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13.

City Council Regular Meeting

Meeting Date:

11/10/2020

BACKGROUND

Council directed staff during the August 2020 pre-budget retreat to review the compensation compression that exists within the City. Due to wide & overlapping pay ranges; in conjunction with the City’s current merit program and a commitment in the recent Class & Comp study to maintain employee depth penetration in their respective pay range, the City continues to have compression issues between and within the Public Safety ranks. This is evidenced when employees (generally, long-term or high-performing) are making more than their supervisors. Problematic morale issues, employee dissatisfaction, low levels of engagement, and a lack of desire to promote are concerns created by compression issues.

A cross departmental team was assembled with representatives from Police, Fire, EMS, and non-Public Safety employees to review the issue, causes of the issue, and to determine potential courses of action to resolve or mitigate compression issues. This team has met weekly beginning in August focusing on the Council’s charge, in understanding the compression issue within Public Safety, as it does not occur with two individual exceptions in Non-Public Safety personnel. Following the problem definition, the committee delved deeper into framing the issue appropriately with compensation policy and practice while identifying contributing factors to the compression issues (e.g. tenure of employee; pay band width; overlap of pay bands; depth of penetration; etc.) by individual employee. With a comprehensive grasp of the issue, the team has moved in to identifying potential solutions, all while trying to balance meaningful and effective change with budgetary constraints.

The purpose of this workshop is to share preliminary findings, provide potential solutions to effectively address the compression issue and seek guidance from Council on the next steps.