Ever wonder how Cook County, as an employer, measures up to other comparable counties in the state when it comes to compensating its employees?
This was something that was debated among commissioners when I first came on board in 2013. It became a key focus when hiring our first county administrator in October of that same year. Due to the unfortunate health circumstance, however, that took the administrator’s life some 14 months later, and the protracted time involved in hiring and acclimating a new administrator, it wasn’t until February 23, 2016 that a formal request for proposals for an Employee Classification and Compensation Study was submitted to a handful of qualified organizations to whom the county had been referred.
A month later (March 2016), proposals were received and reviewed by the county’s personnel committee, comprised of the county administrator, two appointed commissioners (Commissioner Frank Moe and myself) and selected department heads.
The personnel committee made a recommendation to the full board to engage the Keystone Compensation Group LLC out of Minneapolis who has extensive experience with developing and implementing compensation programs in various industries including government, nonprofit, and private sectors.
Working with the Keystone Group, the board of commissioners determined 22 peer group organizations that had at least one match to the 2016 League of Minnesota Cities Survey (usually population size) that would be used by the Keystone Group in conducting their research.
The League provides the salary survey program to facilitate the exchange of information among elected officials and management of participating organizations.
The largest county in the peer group was Cottonwood County (located in the central region of the state) who in 2016 had a population size of a little over 12,000 and a $15.5 million budget. The smallest county used in the peer group was Traverse County (also located in the central region of the state) with a population of 3,445 and a $10.75 million budget in 2016. To put this in context, Cook County’s 2016 population was 5,437 with a 2016 budget that amounted to just a smidgen over $14 million.
Cook County employs approximately 121 full- and part-time employees in approximately 71 job classifications which are organized into three collective bargaining units. In addition to these three bargaining units, there is a non-representative group consisting primarily of department heads.
Why do a job classification study?
Here’s how principal consultant and founding partner of Keystone Compensation Group LLC, Dr. Saado Y. Abboud, answers this question:
“To provide fair and equitable compensation to employees in a competitive and changing labor market.
To maintain a competitive pay structure that takes into consideration the county’s fiscal resources.
To ensure that employee compensation is based on individual performance that meets or exceeds expectations.
To ensure the county’s ability to hire and retain qualified employees and that internal relationships are equitable.”
Cook County’s compensation program had not been “officially” evaluated since 1985—some 31 years—more typical is 5-10 years. So there was no question a study should be initiated.
Know, however, Cook County was not an isolated case when it came to “stale-dated” information related to an organization’s pay structure. As is often expected, once one county begins delving into something— in this case conducting a wage study—there is a domino effect. Such was the case with Cook County.
As a commissioner, I was aware of other counties who were either in the midst of or had just completed a compensation program review. I would often discuss with fellow commissioners outside Cook County, with whom I had the privilege of serving on various boards, whether their organization’s pay structure was appropriate or was in need of adjustment.
Jim Fox and Bruce Lawson, with the compensation, benefits and human resources consulting firm of Gallagher Human Resources Consulting, writing in a February 2016 article titled, Comp Doctor™, “Elected officials are under considerable pressure to hold down the cost of government [and rightly so, I might add]. One of the major costs to most governmental agencies is personnel [just under half of Cook County’s total budget]. Another major issue facing government organizations is the socioeconomic make up of the population served by the agency. One of the messages we hear repeatedly is that the employees in a given agency earn substantially more than the people they serve. While that is largely a separate issue …it still affects the politics and the optics of any decision regarding pay for public sector employees.”
So what did the $50,000 exercise tell us and how did the findings influence the recently ratified employee contracts?
More to come . . .
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works.
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