Tech Implementing Phase 2 Of Pay Study

Tennessee Tech moving forward with the next step in its pay study, with phase two focused on staff throughout the university.

Associate Vice President for Human Resources Kevin Vedder said the new system will allow the university to monitor how much they pay employees relative to the market and adjust accordingly.

“Now that we’ve got market-based compensation salary structures in place for our positions, we’re now wanting to get all of our employees to – starting off to at least the minimum of their newly established pay range,” Vedder said.

Vedder said the university will be adjusting staff pay throughout July. Vedder said that university staff will greatly benefit from the plan, as their pay needs more adjustment than faculty to become competitive.

“Some of our, you know, support staff, professional level positions in particular, were most out of alignment, so we really needed to target and focus on them,” Vedder said. “Because those positions really help run the university.”

Vedder said the next step of the plan will be to look into the compression of different positions based on an employee’s time and performance relative to their newly-established market position.

“The market shifts based on a variety of factors,” Vedder said. “Inflation, demand, those kinds of things. So we’ll have to look at this on an ongoing basis to see how our positions are doing in terms of salary relative to the market and then be able to assess, you know, and prioritize how we want to go about making adjustments to maintain our competitiveness and reward and retain our, you know, employees.”

Vedder said the system will also allow them to correct inversions, which is when the external market for a position outpaces what your employees are earning, so new hires end up getting paid more than established workers.

“Sometimes there’s differences because that external person has got more experience, education, knowledge, but just say all things being equal, performance and otherwise, if you hire somebody in at a higher rate than similarly situated employees, that creates an inversion,” Vedder said.