Human Resources And Information Technology Committee Receives Update On 2022 Compensation Study

The Human Resource and Information Technology Committee met 05/25/2022. It was not a long meeting, clocking in at under 20 minutes. One of the items they talked about was an informational update on the 2022 Compensation Study. Per the memo from January asking for the contract with BakerTilly to be approved, the study was intended to “to analyze current pay practices to determine if they are competitive for our industry and geographic location. The study also helps determine if employees’ salaries remain in compliance with current state and federal laws.”

Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman told the committee that since the compensation study was approved in February, the city and BakerTilly had held 12 different employee/supervisor sessions intended to educate employees and supervisors on why the study was being conducted and what role they played in the study. Following those information sessions, all employees were asked for fill out a position questionnaire which was a fairly detailed online process conducted by BakerTilly. After the employees did their part, supervisors were asked to go in and complete a section as well. Director Ratchman reported that every single city employee and supervisor did what they were asked to do. It was uncommon to get that complete of a response, and he praised the employees and supervisors for taking this seriously.

Since receiving all of those questionnaires, BakerTilly had gone out to the markets and was comparing data by looking at what other employers were paying for similar positions. They already had a lot of private sector data, but in order to obtain public sector data BakerTilly had asked Appleton to come up with 15-20 municipalities or counties to reach out to. Appleton gave them a list of 40 which they were in the process of reaching out to.

Director Ratchman felt it was really important to contact all of those different entities and noted that for some they might just be reaching out about a few positions if a city has a unique position that matches a position in Appleton.

Things were on target and they were expecting to have all the data collected and reported back to the city by July as they had originally planned.

After they had all of that data, they would be at the point where they would have to start making decisions such as if the way they currently pay is relevant, do they need to make changes, are there positions that have fallen behind compensation-wise and, if so, how much do those positions need to pay in order to remain competitive.

Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked if the data would be available substantially before the budget period so that the city would know, for budgeting purposes, if there were some substantial changes that would need to be made.

Director Ratchman thought the information from the study would trail the budget by a bit. They knew that going into the processes. He said they would have a couple decisions they needed to make. (1) what was the appropriate raise for employees in 2022, and (2) based on the compensation study were there implementation costs to get a position up to the level where it needed to be? The answer to the second question was a policy decision as to whether the city wanted to try to make some of those changes in 2022, 2023, or 2024. Once they knew what the numbers were, it would be easier to make a decision, but unfortunately the timing was a little off in terms of getting those numbers before budget-time.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 8) commented that as an employee and a supervisor who has participated in this type of thing, 100% participation was phenomenal. She congratulated everybody for that.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=965179&GUID=5CAFE3D8-08D1-4C19-8FE5-460EAC618A94