6/4 Segal Update

Hi all, 

If you’re receiving this email it is because you filled out the joint Segal Class and Compensation survey a few weeks ago. I apologize for the delay - I promise you I’ve been unable to type this up in the last few weeks because I’ve been tackling issues, not sitting on my hands. UAEA and TSA have been working on a few things since we initially sent out the survey and wanted to give you some information on how we’ve been using your feedback and what approaches we’re currently taking. 

I’ve broken down the concerns expressed in the survey into a few major categories - if you don’t see your specific concern listed, feel free to reach out. Don’t forget I also discussed a lot of specifics about the study in the 5/23 email - feel free to review that here. Please also take a look at the information HR published online last Friday - they’ve put up both a final report and a detailed list of job comparisons. Generally speaking, if you have concerns about how your role was evaluated, please take a look at your comparable positions. 

I Saw a Significant Change in My Pay Range Maximum:

I want to caveat this explanation by saying that a problem with market studies (that hasn’t really come up historically in Tempe) is that pay scales can move up or down. Pay ranges tend to rise with inflation but there are definitely times that they can go down, such as if there are mass layoffs in a certain industry and scores of people are fighting for a handful of roles. That scenario would allow companies or cities to pay less even for people with considerable experience. While this is rare, it definitely can happen, and it's hard for UAEA to fight against changes in market ranges that negatively impact employees when we’ve never contested changes in market ranges that positively impacted employees. I mention this because the simple fact that a market range changed is not enough for us to dispute the results of the study. We need something else that is a little more concrete. 

With that in mind, we still have ways to contest changes in pay ranges. One possibility is by comparing the roles impacted with others that are in the same grade. Theoretically every role in a grade should require a similar level of skills and experience (this was determined with the Segal Evaluator) - if your position requires significantly more (and you can prove it with a job description) we may have a solid case for requesting that your role be moved up a grade or more. Similarly, we’d like to take a look at the market comparison data that Segal provided - that information may help us understand if Segal did an accurate comparison between your role and others in the market study. If they accidentally compared roles that are not comparable to your role, that may be further evidence that we can use. 

If this issue is impacting you at the moment I would appreciate it if you could look at all the roles that are in your pay grade and compare the responsibilities and required experience. Please also check the other roles that Segal compared your job title to - if you see any discrepancies, feel free to reach out. 

My Role’s Grade Placement Seems Incorrect:

This is similar to other concerns but I want to explain a little more about the process that influenced how people’s roles were placed in grades. 

Segal went through and did a market analysis for about 120 positions across the City. They came up with pay ranges that reflected the 75th percentile of the market, and then developed the grades based off of the total range of all city positions. Most people were placed in grades based on their role’s grade roughly matching the 75th percentile. Some people however were placed based on where other roles were placed - if your supervisor was placed at grade 114, for instance, your pay grade would always be below that. Segal used the JDQs and the “Segal Evaluator” tool to determine grade placement of jobs that were not part of the market analysis - this also could have led to placement that seems strange compared to peer titles. 

To be absolutely clear, Segal’s recommendations on placement were not adopted without feedback from HR and Department Directors. I am aware of several dozen positions that HR or a Director moved up a grade or more due to concerns about massive pay decreases or hiring competitiveness. There’s certainly a chance that your grade’s placement still needs to be checked, but multiple people signed off on the final grade selection for every City role. 

Similar Roles in Other Cities Now Make Much More:

This is similar to the prior concern. The goal of the study was getting both competitive pay and ensuring some degree of internal equity. I believe I’m currently tackling all of the examples of under-market roles that have been brought to my attention at the moment - the biggest source of concern seems to be in IT and TSA and UAEA are jointly working to get some major adjustments made. 
we are currently pushing to get people’s grade placement roughly aligned with the Arizona market, but will probably not be able to get this for every role. Some people’s placement was determined by their location on an org chart, and if the grades above your role are locked in by your supervisor, manager, and director, it will be much harder to get changes made on your behalf (ie, you’re at 110, your supervisor is at 111, your manager is at 112, etc. Moving your role would require moving multiple positions up - not impossible, but we’d need a clear justification for why every single role needed to move, not just your own. 

Similar to the prior concern, the best way to address this is to look at the comparison data and determine if your role is doing comparable work to the others in the same grade. We will not always be able to make a successful case, but it will be very helpful if we can assert that grade placement doesn’t make sense and that the role should be moved upwards. 

Certain Jobs Are Being Removed/ My Opportunity for 10% Bump due to Internal Promotion is Being Taken Away:

I was told that there are several roles where prior opportunities for internal growth have been removed by the recent market changes. Segal made recommendations to collapse certain job levels if there were relatively few distinctions between each tier or if the majority of employees in that job group were automatically promoted to the higher level after a few years with the City. Senior titles (or other various job tiers) were kept for roles where there was a clear difference in skills or responsibilities. 

I’ve spoken with UAEA’s attorney and have reviewed both our MOU and the Personnel Rules. It brings me no pleasure to say this, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything stopping the City from removing jobs in the City as long as the removal of those roles doesn’t reduce the pay of people currently working in them. This might seem unfair but makes sense from an administrative standpoint - the needs of cities change over time - there’s a reason we no longer have Telegraph Operators or Mimeograph Clerks working for the City. 

That said, some Directors are stepping up and trying to get people their 10% bumps if they were already in the middle of the promotion process. I am working with two directors on this and can reach out to others if you were mid-process but are being denied the promotional opportunity due to Segal. That said, I don’t know if there’s much of a chance we can get promotions for employees if you were just planning on earning a certificate in your role at some point down the road. 

As a broader conversation about incentivizing skill acquisition, I think the Segal structure allows the union groups to finally propose clear incentives for employees to do additional training or get additional education. I don’t have a solid framework but I’d like to discuss the possibility of employes moving up ranges if they get certain certificates or training in their role that benefits the city. It would also be nice to see if the same thing could happen if someone got a new degree during their time with the City. No promises on whether we can get that implemented, but we’ll discuss it in our next MOU conversation. 

My Job Title Changed and I Don’t Like the New Version 

Some people have expressed concern that their job title has significantly changed or that the “senior” version of their role is being taken away. While addressing this is not UAEA’s highest priority, we recognize that it has big impacts on the lives of employees, both in terms of hiring outside employees and possibly moving cities in the future. We have discussed this concern with HR and while it is not a high priority for them we believe we may be able to push some new policies that would allow title flexibility. HR might maintain an internal title for market studies but there could also be titles informally used by different departments to better recognize each role. I am also pushing to allow employees working in roles for more than 5 years to call themselves a “senior” - this would only be valid if there was not a “senior” version of the role to promote to though. 

Some of My Coworkers Are Making More Than Me with Less Experience:

I heard from a few people that some of their peers with less experience were placed at a higher level in their grade. This is frustrating, but an unfortunate side-effect of some of the requirements the union groups laid out for the study. While we didn’t directly dictate the methodology of the study, UAEA helped influence the design by providing some basic requirements for changes to pay. I wasn't part of that process (this happened before I was President) but I know we set some standards including the following three things:

A. We wanted everyone to get at least a 3% raise

B. We wanted a new system where experience of longterm employees was valued

C. We wanted a system where no one would see a pay cut due to changes to salary minimums or maximums. (If we didn't do this, one could imagine a scenario in which someone making $60k a year was forced to go down to $58k a year (or lower) due to their new range's maximum being lower).

The Segal team came back with their market study and the suggestion of using time-in-position as a way of accounting for employee experience. I believe they went through and placed every employee at different points in the pay ranges based on their time in the role. While this method worked for the majority of employees, there were a couple of people who already made more money than their range placement would require, likely due to negotiating a higher pay rate when they started in the role. If HR had placed them on a level that matched their range placement, they would have seen a pay cut, something which would violate one of the standards we set. 

This didn't happen to more than a dozen or so employees, but in instances where employees' placement in a range would get them a paycut, HR/Segal decided to move them to the next highest range that would give them at least a 3% bump in their pay (another of our requirements). UAEA did not have input on that decision and might have suggested a different method - the problem however of using more advanced methods is that it would have required considerably more time to input than HR’s method of just checking time-in-role. One of the only reasons we’re seeing pay bumps in July is because this process was expedited and UAEA applauds the City’s work at getting money in people’s pockets. 

With all of that in mind, I don’t think that the unions can tackle this problem at this juncture. Doing so would require us to question the entire methodology of the job placement, which could put the pay increases of hundreds of employees in jeopardy. That said, now that the framework is in place we may be able to negotiate changes in the MOU to account for this in the future. I don’t have a clear vision of what that would look like at this juncture but am open to feedback if anyone has any suggestions. 

I Have Significant Experience in My Role and It’s All Not Being Counted:

In an effort to get this study completed and implemented as soon as possible, HR made the decision to determine people’s range placements based upon the time they had in their current role. UAEA did not sign off on this methodology but broadly support the approach - it’s something that can be quickly implemented, recommended changes can be verified in the future, and it accurately places the majority of employees at a reasonably high level in their range. If HR had chosen a more complicated method, such as total work experience in the position, or total years with the City, it is very likely that they would not have had the data ready in time for a July 1st implementation. Total years with the City also has issues - most of the study funds would have gone to directors and managers who have been with the City for many years and people at the bottom of the scale would have seen less compelling adjustments. 

With that in mind, this technique obviously has issues and I’m working with a few people right now who believe that their total service time in a role should be counted (for a variety of reasons, such as disruptions in service). I’m working on appeals to HR and we can always discuss the ethical concerns with Rosa down the road. This will also be something we will bring up in our next MOU negotiations - we think we can propose some alternative assessments that improve the equity but maybe require a bit more time to implement. 

I Have Concerns About My Work Group Attracting Talent in the Future:

Supervisors and non-supervisors alike have expressed concerns about changes to certain jobs that make talent acquisition harder in the future. UAEA cares about this, especially with regards to how this might impact staffing levels in certain workgroups. Our intention is to correct pay inequities or massive market range changes as soon as possible. HR has also stated repeatedly that they will keep an eye on different workgroups and are open to tweaking pay grades if retention becomes an issue - our hope is that it doesn’t have to come to that, but that option is at least explicitly on the table. 

In terms of new hires, prior experience in a role will be counted when new hires get hired at Tempe. Very few employees will start at the bottom of the positions' range unless they literally have no experience. HR has indicated that they are tentatively thinking about placing new employees no higher than halfway through each range (regardless of whether they have more experience). They believe that is the best way to prevent senior employees from feeling devalued by new hires in the future. UAEA and TSA don’t have a solid opinion on that and will discuss it at our next 6-Sided Partnership meeting - if you would like to share your thoughts about future hiring practices, feel free to reach out. 

I Feel Like It’s No Longer Worth It To Promote

I saw a few responses which expressed concerns about promotions “no longer being worth it.” I briefly mentioned this in my email last week but I wanted to reiterate that people will not lose any money if they promote. We haven’t finalized what promotions will look like moving forward but every promotion should still come with a bump in pay. If you are promoted to a new role and make above the minimum of that grade, you will be moved, at minimum, to the place in the range that reflects what you currently make. If you make $50k, for instance, and the range of the higher grade starts at $45k, you'll be moved to whatever step pays at least $50k, plus whatever percentage bump comes with the promotion. Again, this is not finalized but I want to reassure people that it is not the intention of Segal, HR, or the unions to reduce people’s pay or freeze them at a certain level when they move up.