By SUSAN JONES and SHANNON WELLS

With the release of a new job catalog earlier this week, Pitt’s long-gestating compensation modernization project is nearing the completion of Phase 2, and James Gallaher, vice chancellor for human resources, is ready and excited for Phase 3.

The big breakthroughs for Phase 2 were introduction of a $16.50 minimum hourly wage for Pitt staff on all campuses and release of the new job catalog.

The new minimum wage was included in the Pitt budget for 2023-24 approved by the Board of Trustees last week.

“We recognized that we need to be more competitive in the market and did some benchmarking and other things and wanted to come to a wage that we thought would help existing staff but also be competitive for the recruitment of new folks,” Gallaher said. “We just felt like we needed a baseline that was competitive.”

Lindsay Rodzwicz, Staff Council president, said the group's officers "want to acknowledge the significance of the University bringing up all staff to a minimum hourly rate of $16.50, which equates to bringing the lowest earning staff to a living wage for a single adult with no children in Allegheny County. Additionally, we are excited that as a first fiscal adjustment of compensation modernization, staff will be brought up to the minimums of their new ranges. 

"We are optimistic that Compensation Modernization will allow for future adjustments to account for salary compression in order to acknowledge and retain our dedicated, hard-working staff at Pitt. Moving forward, we are also hopeful there will be additional fiscal consideration for compensation modernization outside of the small merit, market and equity portion of the raise pool."

The money to bring people up to the $16.50 an hour rate, or approximately $32,175 per year for full-time employees working 37.5 hours a week, will come from the 1 percent merit, market and equity salary pool in the 2023-24 budget. The trustees also approved separate 3 percent raises for those who meet performance standards.

Both Gallaher and Hari Sastry, Pitt’s chief financial officer, say there’s enough money in the 1 percent pool to cover bringing the lowest-paid Pitt employees up to the new minimum wage this year, although no numbers were available on how many people fell into that category. Gallaher said HR and the CFO’s office have worked very closely together “to make this a success, and the CFO was really invested in making it a success.”

Job catalog

The “job mapping” process took place during the past six to nine months with input from individual responsibility centers (RCs) and departments. The initial job catalog was then reviewed by RCs throughout the past 90 days to find mistakes. Gallaher said about 700 changes were made during this period.

Similar jobs were "market matched" with comparable market salary data to establish 15 pay grades in the new job structure. Jobs were assigned pay ranges to allow room at the lower and higher end for both entry- and expert-level candidates within the same job. (See related story on how to find your job description and pay range.)

The job catalog has numerous levels:

• 18 “job families,” which group jobs with similar duties, such as all accountants.
   
• The “sub-family” further defines and categorizes jobs based on function, describing criteria such as scope, complexity, supervisory responsibilities, minimum experience and education. 
   
• “Position” is a set of duties performed by a particular individual. Each position can have a unique business or working title. 
   
• “Jobs” is a grouping of positions performing essentially similar work.

The chart below shows how this might break down in Pitt IT. Find the full list of job families and sub-families on the Human Resources Sharepoint site (Pitt sign-on required).

Gallaher said the reaction to the job catalog so far has been mixed.

“I think some people are really happy and excited that they can actually look and compare their salary ranges to the market and compare the work that they do to the market,” he said, while others have had questions about where their job is mapped.

“I think there’s a lot of pent up, sort of, excitement about this,” Gallaher said. “It’s been seven years in the making. And I think there are some folks out there that thought it was going to change the world at the onset. It’s going to take time for it to have an impact.”

He credited Maureen Pastin, HR’s director of compensation, and Shahfar Shaari, the project leader who kicked off the compensation modernization project, for all the hard work and extra hours they’ve put in.

The next phase

In the final phase of compensation modernization, Pitt will deploy roadmaps to help identify future potential career pathways throughout the University. Staff will have access to new resources through “career ladders” designed to guide employees through upward career paths based on their current positions. New job architecture and career development resources also will provide visibility into lateral options staff can pursue.

“I’m most excited about the career pathing piece, … where people will be able to see how their career can progress and what can be next for them and what kind of skills they need to move from one level to the next,” Gallaher said. “If they want to change career fields, there’ll be information that helps them to understand how to do that as well.”

Gallaher said he thinks the new job structure is “going to work extremely well for folks over the years. So just don’t look at it as this point in time, but think of the impact from a career standpoint and the impact that it can have on an individual career as we build out those paths.

“That’s the most exciting part of it for me, because I’ve heard people have had to move jobs in the past to get a promotion. And this structure will allow them to stay in place and still progress in a structured way.”

Work on the third and final phase of compensation modernization will start as soon as they get through the salary increase process, Gallaher said, but reiterated that the whole project is a three-to-five-year process. The first focus will be on areas where Pitt and higher education in general have had the biggest challenges in terms of recruiting and retention, such as IT and research staff.

“As the higher education workforce ages, and we need to bring in new talent, we have to reassess,” he said, because the old model of great benefits but lower compensation doesn’t appeal to someone just out of college who isn’t thinking about saving for retirement or putting children through school.

More information

There are multiple online resources via SharePoint to guide staff through the new job structure, including a listing of job families, salary ranges and pay grades. Other tools regarding individual pay ranges and job groupings include compensation modernization frequently asked questions, a glossary of terms and links to reference guides.

“We wanted to provide you with a brief overview of your resources available to get more specific information,” Maureen Pastin, HR’s director of compensation, said at the first information session. “And we look forward to you embracing the new staff compensation system here at the University of Pittsburgh.”

Some of the questions and answers at the information center and in the FAQ include:

Q: How are pay grades constructed in the new job catalog?

A: In the job mapping phase, similar jobs were market matched with comparable market salary data to establish 15 pay grades. Each of these pay grades has a school corresponding pay range in the new job structure. Pay grades define the minimum and maximum salary level for every job. The higher the grade level, the higher the pay.

Q: How are salary ranges constructed?

A: By evaluating the jobs spread across the University and their respective market pay rates, salary ranges were created to encompass those market-dictated pay rates. Jobs were assigned pay grades … to allow room at the lower and higher end of the pay range for both entry- and expert-level candidates within the same job.

Q: Why are jobs with similar titles in different pay grades?

A: Jobs with similar titles may call for different salary ranges, because both jobs demand different skill sets. For example, accountants do audit work, financial forecasting and putting together financial statements. While financial planners help individuals with wealth management and retirement planning … their job titles are similar.

However, market demand can also affect the salary range in which a job is assigned, due to the supply-and-demand conditions for the job. Availability of such knowledge, skills and abilities in the applicant pool can drive market pay to be more or less for certain jobs (that) may share the same or similar titles.

Q: Why not assign pay grades based on job title?

A: To properly benchmark a job, Pitt needed to know what the employee’s job duties were … to determine a job title and the job’s respective salary grade. Because job duties determine market pay, job titles were assigned based on job duties performed, and market pay was assigned to a salary grade. This new system will better ensure alignment of duties and titles with corresponding market pay rates throughout the University.

Q: What if I have a question about the job I’m mapped to in the job catalog?

A: This conversation should begin with your immediate supervisor and manager. Your RC leadership was very much involved in the job mapping process and should be a great source of information for your question. If needed, a consultation with compensation and RC may occur to determine if any changes support it.

Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu. Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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