Faculty and staff gathered at open forums in November to hear the latest updates on SIU’s Compensation 2030 initiative, a project Chancellor Austin Lane described in an email sent to all faculty and staff as “a comprehensive study that will provide us with the foundation we need to move forward.”
Lane wrote that due to historical factors such as the 2015-2017 state budget impasse and inflation exacerbating salary misalignment, the initiative aims to provide equitable and competitive pay for all employees.
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The project is taking steps to address faculty pay disparities and improve salary competitiveness with its Compensation 2030 initiative, which involves CBIZ, a consulting firm specializing in higher education compensation. Through a job analysis questionnaire and faculty market studies, SIU is evaluating its pay structures against peer institutions to determine fairness and competitiveness.
The most recent forums centered on data from the faculty compensation survey, which compares SIU salaries to national benchmarks at other research institutions. Forums for staff results are expected to follow in early 2025, as the initiative progresses.
Nick Wortman, associate vice chancellor for human resources at SIU said, “The main goal is to make sure that we are recruiting and retaining top talent, so top faculty and top staff, to be able to really help us deliver student success and recruit and retain students.”
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Wortman emphasized that the initiative is not just about adjusting salaries but also creating a sustainable framework that ensures long-term fairness and competitiveness across all employee roles.
Wortman said, “We can’t get the best of the best if we’re not competitive with what we’re paying people, and we can’t keep our good folks if we’re not paying competitive to other places that are trying to poach them. That’s kind of at the micro level, and at the macro level, it’s all about, how are we the best institution for students?”
He said there is a sense of relief among staff and faculty and said he hopes it brings optimism for meaningful change.
“In general, the feedback that we get, I think that our folks are happy that we’re doing something,” Wortman said. “There’s a lot of institutions out there that know they have a problem, but they don’t want to address it head on. If you don’t understand the magnitude of your gaps in terms of good compensation, then you can’t really put together a good plan to address it.”
The initial step of the project involved surveying staff and faculty to gather insights about their current compensation and its alignment with their roles and responsibilities. This process was used to identify areas where salaries were misaligned at SIU or lagged behind market benchmarks.
“I think that initially there was a lot of fear of, ‘Is the job analysis questionnaire going to be used against me? Am I going to lose pay out of this?’ And so it was one of the reasons why we did open forums in the early stages, to help dispel some of that and provide a time for people to ask those questions,” Wortman said.
He said the initiative aims to reassure employees that no one’s pay will be reduced as part of the project, and said, “That’s the piece I keep reiterating. We’re not taking pay away from anyone. Absolutely honest, legitimate fear for people to have, right, because it’s their life.”
For faculty, the market analysis is based on national data, specifically from R1 and R2 research institutions. These institutions include a range of peer schools that serve as competitive benchmarks for faculty compensation at SIU, including Bowling Green State University, Central Michigan University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The recommended approach from CBIZ suggests SIU anchor its pay structure at the middle (50th percentile) of the market range.
According to Joe Rice, Director in the Compensation Consulting Division of CBIZ, the proposed faculty pay structure changes include adding a maximum pay level, optimizing pay range widths to ensure competitive starting pay, and adjusting midpoint differentials to provide more flexibility at lower levels and larger salary increases at senior levels. The goal is to bring the internal pay structure more in line with market trends and dynamics.
The process involves documenting market competitive pay using faculty survey data. This includes analyzing pay by faculty rank and academic discipline, and leveraging the data to understand national trends in discipline differentials. Rice said that SIU currently has a minimum but no maximum pay level in place.
The proposal includes bringing all employees to the updated minimum pay level, with a potential pay freeze for those currently above the updated maximum. For faculty members below the updated minimum, the cost to bring them into the range would be approximately $3.8 million, or about 7% of faculty payroll.
Rice said that SIU has 116 employees above the proposed range maximum, at an additional cost of about $1.4 million, but these higher salaries do not offset the costs of adjustments for those below the minimum.
Employees below the minimum will be recommended for an increase to the minimum, while those above the maximum will not have their pay reduced. A financial impact analysis estimates that 494 faculty members are currently below the minimum, at a cost of $3.8 million to bring them up to the updated range.
In terms of future pay increases, Rice said, “We want those minimums to stay competitive, those maximums to be appropriate. But…on top of that, we’re also recommending what we think is a market-competitive salary increase budget. The goal with that is not to match that market movement, but to structure things so that you don’t just stay at the minimum.”
He said they want the minimum to increase, but also aim for faculty to receive more than just that minimum, helping them progress toward the midpoint of the pay range.
The proposed structure also includes tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions, with no major structural changes from the current system. The new pay structure would feature range spreads of 12.5%, allowing more flexibility for salary changes, particularly for tenure-track roles. A tiered system (A, B, C, D) is proposed, with Tier B set at the national average and the other tiers offering 10% discounts or 20-40% premiums to account for market differences across disciplines. The tiers will be assigned to specific disciplines based on market demand and compensation trends.
One key aspect of the CBIZ recommendations is for SIU to implement a career architecture to create a clearer structure for employees.
“Right now, we’ve got classified civil service, and we’ve got administrative professional, and there’s not a whole lot of consistency through,” Wortman said. “People can’t identify a career path from entry level to executive management very easily. The career architecture not only gives us a consistent and objective way to set pricing for jobs, but it also will help employees understand what the path is for their growth.”
Rice said, the career architecture framework aims to standardize job classifications and pay structures while providing employees with transparency about their roles and opportunities for advancement. By clearly defining pathways, the system is designed to help further support professional growth and ensure fairness in compensation.
Wortman said, “One of the big benchmarks that we also want to do with this, is to start building developmental opportunities into that career architecture so folks know what they’re going to be paid. Everything’s very transparent, and it really geared towards employee growth and retention.”
The initiative focuses on developing a more structured and consistent system aimed at improving clarity and alignment in employee roles and compensation. As the project progresses, the strategies will be further refined.
Rice said, “We track a lot of different wage and inflationary metrics. I’ve been in compensation for 20 years, and for 17 or 18 of those 20 years, wage growth has been faster than inflation. We’re in an environment now where wages are growing faster than inflation, so we’re taking those adjustments into account.”
Wortman said that typically, once the structure is established, it is reviewed every two to three years to ensure that jobs continue to be valued in the market appropriately.
“We’ve also got to look at equity too, and make sure that as we’re bringing in new people, we’re not bringing them in over top of where others in comparable positions are,” he said. “So it’s kind of like the spirit of continuous improvement. You’ve got to keep adjusting.”
Wortman said the process cannot move forward until all data is collected and thoroughly analyzed.
“I think people are super anxious about the timelines… but, until we have those results, we don’t even want to start talking about when we can start implementing the changes, just because we don’t know how big the impact is yet,” he said.
The data, which is needed to understand the full scope of the necessary adjustments, will determine the next steps.
“We’re super complex here, so it’s not just a matter of leadership saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to give X group of employees a raise tomorrow’. A lot of those employees are represented by a collective bargaining unit. So before we can do anything with wages, we’ve got to sit down and basically go through negotiations with those groups,” Wortman said.
The implementation of changes will likely span several years, involving continuous conversations with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that all voices are heard and that the changes are aligned with both institutional goals and legal frameworks.
Wortman acknowledged that the most challenging phase of the project is still ahead.
“I think what we’ve done thus far is kind of the easy part. And then when we get all of the final picture painted, the hard part’s going to come with how we make decisions about the prioritization of how we fund some of this over time,” he said.
Wortman said this will require a careful balance of financial resources and thoughtful planning to ensure the adjustments are sustainable over the long term.
For more information about the faculty study updates, visit the Compensation 2030 website. Slide presentations from the forum are also available for viewing there.
Staff reporter Annalise Schmidt can be reached at [email protected]. To stay up to date on all your southern Illinois news, be sure to follow The Daily Egyptian on Facebook and on X @dailyegyptian.
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