Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This pertains to local government work.
As I have mentioned in this forum before, I am in a position where I was hired at the discretionary max for my payscale, but merit and cola raises have been frozen since I was hired. I am now 20% below the current max for my payscale; every new hire at my scale since I was hired has been hired at the max, so I am now the lowest paid person on my scale in a workforce of about 4000.
My only option for getting a raise any time soon is to have my position reclassified. Has anyone here been through a job reclassification, especially with the private sector? I am looking for advice about how to handle this.
Advantages: I am the only employee with my job title, so a reclassification will not affect anyone else. I am actually the only employee ever to held my job title in our organization.
Disadvantages: I am already the same pay scale as my supervisor and his supervisor. They were hired through internal processes though, so they still do make about 35% and 50% more than me right now. But, I would basically be on the highest pay scale in our division if I reclassified. Also, my position is consider equivalent to several high level IT positions. They are on the same payscale, but get hired at much higher discretionary maxes, so they all make 15-70% more than me.
So, given all that, any advise or insight into this process? I already had the first step today when I was asked to completely rewrite my job description and duties.
How are jobs valued? A point factor system or market pricing? In other words, do they learn what you do and then try and find out what your skill set pays on the job market or do they have a System where they measure the cpvalue of your job duties and skills required against an internal measuring system? In either case do you think your job should be most highly valued job grade?
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,551 posts, read 81,085,957 times
Reputation: 57739
I can only tell you how we do it, and I just went through this with a new title and 12.5% raise. We have to write up a lot of detailed information on a form, about what we do, and what percentage of time in each area of work. Details include number of direct reports, time spend with your boss, amount of budget and contracts you are responsible for etc. Then the boss will sign it to verify, and forwards it to HR. The met with me for an hour and a half, and I brought to that meeting examples of the work I have been doing, and discussed it in detail. They will then submit the data to a service we subscribe to that sends them a list of job descriptions and pay ranges for each part of the job, and based on the percentage of the day spent on each, calculates an appropriate salary.
For example, if a typical day involves supervising 4 programmers and an admin, and that takes 2 hours, they might figure 2 hours a day pay as a supervising programmer/analyst pay. Then if there is an hour a day doing long range planning and organizational analysis they might add that in at Manager pay.
If, on the other hand, you are just doing what's in your existing job description,
or heaven forbid less, you may get no change or even a demotion. My advice is to try and do what the service we use does ahead of time, read a lot of other job descriptions and use wording that describes your work in terms of what others who are paid more are doing.
A reclassification could mean that your current position is eliminated while a new position is created. This means, for some public employers, that the new job has to be posted and people interviewed. Essentially you have to compete for your own job. This should not be a problem if your supervisor wants to keep you, but will probably irritate people who apply to why is really a bogus posting.
As hemlock said, you need to justify why you should be reclassified at a higher position. Take on some additional, more complex responsibilities and you should be good.
I can only tell you how we do it, and I just went through this with a new title and 12.5% raise. We have to write up a lot of detailed information on a form, about what we do, and what percentage of time in each area of work. Details include number of direct reports, time spend with your boss, amount of budget and contracts you are responsible for etc. Then the boss will sign it to verify, and forwards it to HR. The met with me for an hour and a half, and I brought to that meeting examples of the work I have been doing, and discussed it in detail. They will then submit the data to a service we subscribe to that sends them a list of job descriptions and pay ranges for each part of the job, and based on the percentage of the day spent on each, calculates an appropriate salary.
For example, if a typical day involves supervising 4 programmers and an admin, and that takes 2 hours, they might figure 2 hours a day pay as a supervising programmer/analyst pay. Then if there is an hour a day doing long range planning and organizational analysis they might add that in at Manager pay.
If, on the other hand, you are just doing what's in your existing job description,
or heaven forbid less, you may get no change or even a demotion. My advice is to try and do what the service we use does ahead of time, read a lot of other job descriptions and use wording that describes your work in terms of what others who are paid more are doing.
That first part has already been done, but it being held up in politics and cannot be implemented for another 5 years. Basically, that process cannot happen without the merit board meeting and the council won't appoint a merit board, so they can't meet.
I came back as 15th percentile for my pay+benefits based on my assigned duties on my old job description, and less than 5th percentile based on my actual duties. My boss is pretty worried that I will leave
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
