UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa — Penn State’s Compensation Modernization Initiative continues to make steady progress. This initiative – designed to modernize the University’s compensation and classification structure – has established a solid foundation of updated job families and profiles. The next phase of the initiative focuses on applying salary market data to the University’s new salary bands. When the initiative is complete, the University will have all the foundation needed to keep job profiles up-to-date and assess staff compensation compared to the wider job market.
Here is an overview of the project activities:
- Initiation/discovery (Complete)
- Job architecture (Complete)
- Development of a compensation philosophy (In progress)
- Salary market assessment and program design (In progress)
- Implementation and communication of results (Coming soon)
The project team has reviewed thousands of job descriptions and written hundreds of new job profiles. In close collaboration with Human Resources strategic partners and consultants, staff employees have been mapped into updated job profiles. During the spring 2023 semester, staff members will receive notification of any changes to their profiles. The new job profiles are modernized to reflect the work staff members complete and are organized within an up-to-date job family structure.
As a reminder, no staff member will see a decrease in compensation as a result of the initiative. Any potential salary increases that result from the initiative may take additional time to implement and depend on the goals and budgets of individual units, colleges and campuses.
Although the validation period of the project’s job profile structure phase is now complete, the team will continue to review feedback from leadership throughout the University as it finalizes updates to staff job profiles. Changes in how staff roles are defined can happen at any time, and the new system is designed to be agile and address any necessary changes to job profiles and/or levels as the needs of the University change.
To understand how Penn State’s staff salaries compare to the wider job market, the team is reviewing data from several salary surveys that include local and national organizations as well as higher education and industry. This data is used to inform the design of the new salary program, which will establish new staff pay ranges. The completed work will allow the University to routinely collect future market data to update the staff compensation salary ranges more frequently.
The implementation phase of the Compensation Modernization Initiative will begin in the first quarter of 2023. More information, including training on how the new program works, will be shared in the new year.