ACU’s compensation philosophy will support our core mission of educating students for Christian service and Christ-centered leadership throughout the world so that “By 2020, ACU will become the premier university for the education of Christ-centered, global leaders”. In keeping with our values as a Christian university, our mission and our vision ACU seeks to accomplish two goals through its administrative and operational employee compensation plan:
- Attract, retain and motivate a highly talented, diverse workforce and,
- Encourage and reward workplace activities that support the university’s overall goals and objectives,
so that ACU provides the finest education and Christ- centered environment for our students.
Our ethos is woven into the fabric of work at ACU. Each administrative and operational staff member will exemplify our ethos by working together for the benefit of our students and faculty. The university will deliver administrative and operational services efficiently, effectively, honorably and transparently. We will strive to become the employer of choice.
Our administrative and operational employee (staff) compensation plan will be rooted in these guiding principles:
Mission alignment: ACU recognizes that our staff is a key element in accomplishing our mission and realizing our vision. Accordingly, our compensation policies and processes for our staff will align with and exemplify the values of ACU while simultaneously enabling ACU’s 21st Century Vision.
Transparency: ACU will design, communicate and administer the staff compensation plan in a competent, consistent, and impartial manner.
Justice: ACU will strive to compensate staff with a living wage that is just and fair. Compensation will be based on individual job performance, skills and abilities.
Market Competitiveness: ACU will strive to match the market in our recruiting region. Our staff compensation will be competitive with peer institutions.
Financial Sustainability: ACU will plan and administer staff compensation packages in a financially sustainable manner to ensure good budgetary stewardship and financial stability.
Successfully implementing our staff compensation plan will require designing an implementation strategy that has these goals…
- Articulate an effective, finite, measurable set of total compensation goals for ACU’s staff employees.
- Develop an effective, mandatory system for assessing staff employee performance with sound and capable supervision of every employee, clearly communicated expectations between the University and the employee, and specific expectations between supervisor and employee.
- Regularly assess ACU’s staff employment competitiveness, based not only on compensation, but other measures as well (e.g. recruitment and retention). This process should be a data-driven and quantifiable.
- Examine, implement, and assess innovative human resource practices that lead to opportunities for career growth, a positive and safe workplace environment, employee recognition, respect from supervisors and co-workers, a positive campus climate, and good communication.
- Build a strategic budget that allows for a competitive and equitable total compensation package, effective professional development of employees and a positive work environment
- Reviews the progress of these and other compensation-related issues on at least an annual basis.
… and follows this step by step process:
- Conduct job analysis: this is the process of gathering, examining and interpreting data about each job’s tasks and responsibilities. It will include tracking an employee’s duties and the duration of each task, observing the employee performing his or her job, interviewing the employee, managers and others who interact with the employee and comparing the job to other jobs in the same department and job grade or job family.
- Group into job families: Once the university feels confident that it has current and accurate job descriptions, it will group the jobs into separate job families, e.g., information technology, office/ administrative support.
- Rank positions: A job evaluation is the process of rank ordering the jobs, not the people, based on job content to demonstrate the relative worth and level of responsibility of all jobs to one another. There are a number of job evaluation methods; ACU will follow the Hay point method system, which uses only three factors and measures the degree that these three factors are required for each position. The Hay system factors are know-how, problem-solving ability and accountability.
- Conduct market research: Conducting market research ensures that wages paid to staff employees are comparable to similar positions in the marketplace. When conducting market research on salaries, will consider the following:
- Job titles vary between organizations. ACU will scrutinize the descriptions of the jobs surveyed to make sure that the related tasks, functions and level of responsibility match positions at the university.
- To obtain current, accurate salary information, ACU will need to purchase salary data and will in some cases conduct its own market research.
- Whenever possible, ACU will try to obtain information from more than one market survey resource, at least for benchmark positions.
- Create job grades: ACU will use its job evaluation data to group positions within each job family into job grades. The university will note the range of pay in the salary surveys and all the information that may be relevant when establishing an average salary. ACU will use the 50th percentile in salary survey data to meet the market.
- Create a salary range: For each pay grade, ACU will establish a midpoint, a minimum and a maximum pay range.
- Conduct out of range analysis: At this stage in the process, ACU will take a look at what it is paying its staff employees in comparison to the data it has collected and the proposed salary grades and ranges for positions. ACU will rely on the market data and its pay philosophy to set these ranges.
- Updating and aging (refresh the plan): Salaries never remain unchanged. The rate of pay is constantly changing with external market and economic activity; hence salary survey data will be gathered and reviewed every two to three years so that appropriate adjustments can be made to ACU’s salary ranges.
- Communicate the job grade structure, salary ranges, and market comparison data to the staff, and make the information available.