Outagamie County will increase salaries to better compete for employees, fight vacancies
APPLETON - All Outagamie County employees will receive a wage increase next year after a compensation study found 60% of county positions pay below competitive market wages.
The wage increase comes as the county is changing its compensation structure after it experienced record-high employee turnover last year due to pandemic-induced stress and uncompetitive wages.
"All employees will receive some sort of an increase to transition to the new wage schedule," Human Resources Director Lisa Lux told county board members during its Tuesday meeting.
Last year the county lost an average of one employee a day and the number of open positions stood at 198 on March 1.
Because of this, the county is examining its compensation and benefits in an effort to retain and attract full-time employees.
How competitive are Outagamie County wages?
The compensation study — conducted by McGrath Human Resources Group — found that of the county's 394 unique job titles, the majority of them make below the market average for similar public and private sector jobs.
Of the county positions:
60% have uncompetitive wages
21% have competitive wages
19% make an average market wage
McGrath determined this by averaging the rate of pay of employees with the same job title and comparing that number to similar jobs in the area and other county jobs across the state.
"It's not 60% of your employees, it's 60% of the positions," McGrath Senior Consultant Malayna Halvorson Maes said. "For example, if we were looking at dispatchers, and you might have 20 dispatchers, then we took the average of that rate of pay and we compare that."
To get that 60% to a competitive wage, the county plans to streamline its current compensation structure and increase all wages to get them to an average or competitive market wage.
Lux said the type of increase would depend on how far employees are from the competitive market wage.
"It could be an increase of two cents an hour initially because they are being paid close to market right now or that could be an increase that is higher depending on where they are from a market value standpoint," Lux said.
When will employees get the wage increase?
All wages will shift into the new pay structure in the first pay period in January.
Additionally, the county will examine its benefits structure next year and consider providing increased benefits to help retain its employees starting in 2025.
How much will the wage increases cost the county?
The pay increase for all employees is expected to cost the county $3 million in 2024.
What is the new compensation structure?
To help implement the new wages, the county will simplify its current compensation structure into a 10-step wage schedule based on experience, performance and the number of years spent working for the county.
This works by having new employees starting at the first "step" or pay grade and after a certain number of years working for the county, the employee would move up to the next step. Each step comes with a 3% pay increase.
New employees with more experience can be hired between steps one through five to determine their wages and where current employees fall on the step schedule will be determined by their department heads as the new structure is rolled out in coming months.
Additionally, the county will be reducing its nearly 400 job titles down to 250 to simplify its compensation structure.
Sophia Voight is a local government and political reporter with The Post-Crescent. She can be reached with feedback and tips at svoight@postcrescent.com. Follow her on Twitter @sophia_voight.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Outagamie County will increase salaries to better compete for employees
