County to award raises by merit
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 6, 2015 1:46 PM
Wayne County commissioners by a 6-1 vote Tuesday morning adopted a new pay plan that replaces across-the-board raises with merit pay increases based on employee evaluations.
Commissioners John Bell and Ed Cromartie voiced concerns that merit-based salary increases could be too easily swayed by favoritism.
Bell said he too often had seen such merit-based systems turn into a "buddy system."
However, County Manager George Wood sought to assure them there would be enough safeguards in place to prevent that from happening.
Wood said the county manager and human resources director would review the evaluations and compare them to the level of the raises given to ensure that each increase accurately reflected how the employee's performance had been rated.
Commissioners would evaluate the county manager, clerk to the board and county attorney. The county manager and assistant county manager would evaluate the department heads they supervise.
Just as importantly, the new plan will provide the flexibility to give pay increases because it is not tied to a specific annual amount like the existing plan, Wood said.
It has been nearly four years since county employees have had a pay increase. That is because of the struggling economy and a pay plan that was set up to provide increases of 2.5 percent across-the-board, Wood said.
Over that time, the county has used an informal system in which department heads would ask for merit increases for some employees each year, he said.
Commissioner Ray Mayo said the private sector had gone to a merit-based system years ago as a way to reward people who were doing a good job.
Also just because an employee is evaluated does not mean he or she will get a pay increase, he said.
Cromartie, who still voted no, said public jobs are different and that he was still concerned about the evaluations being too subjective.
It might be easy to for a private company to evaluate an employee on how they produce a product, Cromartie said.
But he questioned how the county would be able to evaluate employees on how well they filled out forms.
"That is where we get into that level of subjectivity," he said.
"The way I would do that is how courteous were they? Were there problems? Are there mistakes on the report? How quickly can they process them?" Wood said. "If one can do eight a day and the other can do four -- you can look at that.
"So there are qualitative differences in how they did their job. I agree with you that it is more difficult than if you were running a machine and you turn out so many parts or something. But it can be done."
Another qualitative difference would be does the employee clearly understand his or her job or are they "just going through the motions?" Wood said.
"Their attendance, you get a sick leave day every month," he said. "Do they burn through that or do they save them? Are they excessively late? All of those kinds of things would be involved."
Mayo agreed there are many criteria for evaluating employees in both the public and private sectors.
"Our criteria (for his company), and it should be for the county, is quality first, quantity, attendance, attitude and cooperation," Mayo said. "That should be the standard for any job in this county or in the private sector."
No salary ranges were discussed. That will be the next step, and should be ready for commissioners when they meet on May 19, Wood said.
In making his recommendation, Wood said he had looked at drafting a plan that would flexible enough in order to work in any fiscal year, whether county revenues are strong or "barely growing."
It also provides way for the county to increase pay when it documents that a position is underpaid when compared to the relevant job market, Wood said.
Finally, it is based "upon what comparable jobs are paid in the job market, not on whether the pay seems too low or high," he said.
The plan replaces the current 19-step per grade plan with three steps -- beginning, middle and ending step.
Also, in each proposed budget, the county manager would recommend a percentage of salaries and benefits to go into a pool for each department.
For example, if a 1.5 percent pool is recommended, each department head would get that amount of money to cover 1.5 percent of wages and benefits for his or her department.
The exception would for the department heads' wages, which would go into a pool for the county manager and assistant county manager to determine.
Each year a rule would be determined for the maximum percentage raise any one employee could receive, he said. In the example above, if the pool is 1.5 percent, the maximum any one employee could receive might be set at 1.75 percent, he said.
However, the department head must stay within the 1.5 percent pool of money for raises.
In response to questioning by Commissioner Joe Daughtery, Wood said the percentage of increase would be for the salary only.
It would not include other costs associated with salary such as FICA or 401(k) that would change as well, he said.