Council Approves Out Of Scope Retroactive "Gobbledegook" Pay Increases
Certain members of Administration and management will have a little bit more money in their wallets after Council approved some retroactive pay based upon new job evaluations.
As part of the 2022 Budget deliberations Council voted in favour of paying out of scope employees based upon job evaluations. For those employees whose job re-evaluations judged them to be more valuable within the organization that means more cash.
Presented to Council in 2020 the job re-evaluations were referred to the 2022 Budget deliberations due to monetary concerns at the time. The 2022 budget deliberations in the end retroactively awarded the affected employees the funds that were not approved in the 2021 budget.
The cost of implementing the pay increases based upon the new job evaluations is staged.
The $99,196 in retroactive pay for 2021 will be funded from accumulated salary reserves. The retroactive pay increases will effect 18 out of scope employees who will on average each enjoy $9,000 annual pay increases in 2023.
In 2022 the $134,896 will see $74,482 funded from salary reserves and the remainder of $60,414 to be funded from the 2022 Operating Budget.
In 2023 the full amount of $163,876 will be funded from the Operating Budget.
The accumulated salary reserves are the over estimation of the previous years salary settlements. The reserve fund presently holds $173,678.
The job evaluation - what duties and pay scale the City pays out of scope (non-union) or Administration employees - program dated back to 1999 and as such was reviewed and updated leading to retroactive pay increases for some employees based upon their duties.
In 2018 Council authorized spending $50,000 to modernize the job evaluation framework for both out of scope and CUPE (in scope) unionized employees.
Former Councillor Brian Swanson called the entire job re-classification program at the time as “gobbledegook”.
“So how we develop compensation is antiquated and it needs to be updated and we would say fair compensation is an important retention tool,” City Manager Jim Puffalt told Council. “To be fair to all of employees in order to keep good employees as you know I think we have a fairly decent program. We have a number of employees who have gone through years and years with the City.”
Director of Human Resources TJ Karwandy said fair compensation was key to employee retention with out of scope employees remuneration based upon internal and external considerations.
“When I think of compensation there are really two elements to it. There is your internal relativities and your external comparisons,” Karwandy said..
External comparisons look at what other employers pay and internal relativities is what is what one job worth in an organization when compared to another.
The internal relativities is a hierarchy of the value of jobs and what they entail within the organization or in this case the City of Moose Jaw, Karwandy said.
Councillor Heather Eby said a main focus for Council has been the modernization of the City when it comes to such things as technology but there also needs to be a modernization of human resources to accompany that.
“I think we need to modernize and I will use Mr Karawndy’s words align with the realities of today…we are all aware how important it is to keep and retain good long term employees,. And I think this is part of that” Councillor Eby said.
The initiative passed in a 4 -2 vote with Councillors Dawn Luhning and Kim Robinson opposed. Mayor Clive Tolley was absent.