Title
Approval of the FY24 Salary Plan Job Class Order
Recommended Action
I move that Council approve the revised FY24 Salary Plan Job Class Order schedule as shown in Attachment A.
County Manager's Recommendation
The County Manager recommends that Council approve the revised FY24 Salary Plan Job Class Order as requested.
Body
Staff is requesting that Council approve the revised FY24 Salary Plan. The FY24 Salary Plan Job Class Order reflects Council's approved FY24 budget. The FY24 Salary Plan Job Class Order document represents the County's job titles and salary grades arranged by Job Classes/Families, to include the minimum, midpoint and maximum of the grade, and the Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA) designation of Exempt (EX) or Non-Exempt (NE) for each position (Attachment A).
The County Charter, County Code and the Personnel Rules and Regulations provide the basic framework through which the job classification and compensation system is maintained and administered. The establishment of new job classes and the abolishment of existing classes are subject to approval by Council.
Compensation Philosophy:
The purpose of Los Alamos County's compensation philosophy is to define a competitive, total compensation approach that enables us to achieve our overall mission, vision and goals. The County is committed to providing a compensation program that is market competitive, which provides a good balance between compensation, benefits and rewards, and enables us to recruit, retain and reward a high performing and motivated workforce that supports our commitment to serve our citizens.
In developing a salary plan, the County takes into account both the external market value of benchmarked jobs and the internal value of non-benchmarked jobs with an overall structure of job families. Drilling down further regarding market competitiveness, the County considers peer employers of similar size, providing like services, and in comparable industries. Different geographic labor markets are considered based on where we tend to recruit from and are defined as follows: 1) Local/Statewide: Grades 101-124; b) Statewide/Southwest Regional: Grades 125-132 and 201-215; and c) National: Grades 301 and above. In order to ensure the County is competitive, the current Personnel Rules state the Human Resources Manager is required to conduct a salary market survey for the pay plan every four (4) years, which currently underway and anticipated to be complete in the fall of 2023.
In looking at the market data, an organization usually will determine how it would like to position itself against the competitors. Per Council's direction, as well as the recommendation of our compensation consultants, an approach of applying a geographic cost of labor factor was applied to our salary structure to ensure the County remains competitive. Cost of labor reflects the supply and demand for employees, versus a cost of living which is a demand for goods and services. The ideal plan was to apply a cost of labor percentage to the Salary Grade Table each year in order to ensure salary ranges would keep pace with the market and that the gap in between market studies would be minimal, due to the application of a cost of labor factor to the structure each year. The FY24 Salary Grade Table has been updated to account for a 3% cost of labor adjustment. Council approved 5% for salary maintenance overall during the FY24 budget hearings. The first 3% is being applied here to the salary structure and the other 2% will be used as a pool to provide for merit-based salary adjustments at the start of FY24.
Alternatives
Council could choose to not approve the revision to the FY24 Salary Plan Job Class Order.
Fiscal and Staff Impact/ Planned Item
The new job descriptions and the related salary adjustments are included in the approved FY24 Budget.
Attachments
A - FY24 REVISED Salary Plan Job Class Order