Project Background

University Makes Significant Investment in Employees

The University of Arkansas is committed to supporting the success of its employees. By making a significant investment in compensation and resources, the university will be better positioned to attract, develop and retain faculty and staff while enhancing its status as an Employer of Choice.

Employees received a market adjustment provided in the form of a 3% Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) increase added to their base pay effective July 1, 2024. The university has also invested in tools and access to increased market data that will help provide greater consistency and sustainability for pay structures and practices.

Many in-scope faculty and staff members will receive an additional market adjustment to their base pay in two phases starting this fall.

In addition, many Graduate Assistants (GAs) received a market adjustment provided in the form of a 3% COLA to their base pay effective July 1, 2024. GAs will also receive an increase to their minimum base pay after a recent benchmarking project.

Project Overview

The university announced the beginning of its Staff Classification and Compensation Project in 2022, introducing it as a foundational effort as part of its 150 Forward strategic planning process to enhance the U of A’s role as an employer of choice – with the purpose of establishing an environment that enables employees to thrive in their personal and professional lives. The project began with the university’s executive team partnering with Huron Consulting Group, a company who has been successful in supporting similar projects with other higher education institutions. The executive team agreed upon four initial governance groups to oversee the project. The governance groups worked closely together to identify subject matter experts (SMEs) representing all units across the institution. The governance groups, unit leaders, and SMEs were critical in helping define the work being performed across campus - which is the first step to developing more consistent job descriptions, enabling greater alignment with market compensation data connected to similar jobs in the industry, and demonstrating an ongoing commitment to competitive pay.

The project is intended to develop, implement and administer a more consistent and transparent job and compensation architecture, along with associated pay practices. The goal of the architecture is to provide better visibility into the type of work being performed across campus by categorizing similar work together and showing the associated qualifications for all positions. The architecture is intended to eventually be used as a tool to help staff develop a roadmap to consider and potentially work toward their career goals at the university. View this training video to learn more about the different components of the architecture and how it helps support clearer career path opportunities.

The project was segmented into four major steps:

Defining the Work:

What type of work is occurring across campus and who is doing the work?

Linking to Market:

What similar work is occurring within the selected market and how is this work compensated?

Updating Processes:

How can we update administrative pay and classification processes to prepare for the future?

Planning for Improvement Changes:

What is the best course of action to achieve more market alignment, including title and pay?

Defining the Work

SMEs across every unit, previously identified by the university’s project governance groups, were engaged to define the work performed at the university and group them into job families based on similar work.

Linking to Market

After defining the work, the SMEs - with the support of Human Resources (HR) - developed job profiles, which were compared to the market through analysis of industry and higher education data for similar work.

As part of the significant investment made by the university for the project, the HR compensation team will have continued access to higher education and industry compensation survey data and will conduct periodic market reviews to help the university’s job and compensation architecture remain competitive.

To evaluate university classification and compensation in relation to the market for similar positions, the project utilized a benchmarking process that included a blend of higher education, regional and national industry data.

• For 60% of the benchmarking process, the university used a higher education peer set of 84 similar universities. The university utilized data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) as a resource.
• For the remaining 40% of the benchmarking process, the university used general industry data based on work functions. The university utilized data from Mercer and the Northwest Arkansas Human Resources Association (NOARK) as resources for national and regional information.

 Updating Processes

The project team and HR met with stakeholders throughout the planning and implementation processes to understand current business processes and approval flows required for pay and position actions, as well as to identify challenges and opportunities for consistent and efficient implementation.

Implementation pay guidelines are being drafted to help the university maintain compliant and efficient pay administration with the goal to make pay changes and other regular actions performed by units more consistent, operationalized, and user-friendly. Other processes will be evaluated after implementation with the intent to make it easier for employees to perform job functions.

 Planning for Improvement Changes

Throughout the project, the governance teams, executive team, unit leaders, SMEs, and HR increased collaboration with campus units to create, align, modify and validate the accuracy of in-scope employee job profiles and market alignment (mapping).

Supervisors, campus leadership and Staff Senate received in-person and virtual training on the project’s scope, status and timeline. HR Partners were provided training to understand the architecture in order to support their units with accurate market alignment of the job profiles.

 How Were Staff Positions Matched to Job Profiles?

• All in-scope staff positions were assigned and aligned by unit leadership to a market job profile – enabling the university to evaluate market compensation benchmarks based on the work being performed, not the employee’s working or state titles.
• The process of mapping all in-scope positions (approximately 2,700) to the appropriate job profile required iterative reviews, starting with SMEs and unit leaders who collaborated with HR Partners and those within their unit to place employee job profiles to the appropriate spot in the architecture.
• New hires were mapped by SMEs and unit leaders with support from HR Partners based on similar job functions in the market and frequently validated by units throughout the process.
• In total, more than 175 campus stakeholders were engaged in the design of the job classification architecture, review of job profiles and employee mapping. This process emphasizes future planning by developing business operations that continuously align positions with the evolving market.