From the Dean: Salary, compensation, and parity
One of the hot topics of discussion on campus relates to the compensation study by the Huron Consulting Group that is underway currently at UND. The Huron study was developed to augment the compensation analyses that UND has been doing for some time. Although this analysis of UND compensation remains a work in progress, I thought that it would be appropriate to give faculty and staff an update of where things stand at present. It turns out that there are three components to the compensation study and while the three components are related, they also are distinct. By the way, all three components are looking specifically at the largest portion of an employee’s compensation, which obviously is salary. Employees do get other forms of compensation, such as retirement contributions made by UND and the cost savings that come from not having to pay a monthly premium for health insurance. None of the market comparisons include these other components of compensation; comparisons have been made to the salaries paid by similar institutions (a so-called market comparison).
The first component of the salary comparison that was recently completed recapitulates what UND has done in the past. This was an employee-by-employee analysis across UND to be sure that all employees are receiving at least a minimum amount when compared with other educational institutions. For UND, the definition of “minimum salary” has been set at the tenth percentile compared with the appropriate market comparison – that is, each employee at UND is expected to make a salary that is equal to or greater than what the lowest paid 10 percent of people earn elsewhere who are in a similar job classification.
The SMHS recently received a report from UND Human Resources with a list of all our employees with a comparison with the appropriate market minimum salary based on the appropriate market comparison. We have been working through this report and at this time no significant findings have been found for staff employees – that is, all of our staff employees are at or above the established market minimum for their particular job classification. The analysis for faculty employees hasn’t been completed yet, but so far no glaring discrepancies have been noted. I anticipate that our analysis of the “market minimum” data for the faculty will be completed by the end of the month; I plan to update you when we’ve finished looking at the data.
The second component of the salary comparison reported by the Huron Consulting Group looked at the salaries of all UND employees for any evidence of inequities related to protected class status (such as gender, race, veteran status, age, and disability status). I am very pleased to report that Huron did not find a single instance of a material difference in salary based on protected class at the SMHS.
The last component of the compensation project is ongoing and is looking at job bands, titles, and markets to ensure that we have equity and parity across UND – that is, that people doing similar work in different schools, colleges, and units are compensated similarly. Just as we have worked to avoid any inequities related to protected class status, we similarly need to be sure that the same applies for job classifications across the organization.
One of the things that we’ve learned already from the compensation study is that we (both the SMHS and UND) need to establish the same minimum salary expectations for post-doctoral fellows as we have for virtually all other UND employees, as well as a process to better determine how a specific salary for a given post-doc (above the minimum level) is established. It turns out that there is some variability in minimum salary levels for post-docs both at the SMHS and across UND. Most institutions have a minimum salary expectation for post-docs, although the actual threshold amounts differ. Because many post-docs are paid through grants, salaries can vary because of the tight budgets on most grants. Nevertheless, setting a minimum salary level certainly seems to be the right thing to do, especially as we strive for the “A” in our strategic plan, UND LEADS. In this case, the “A” stands for “affinity,” which in the words of the plan indicates that we strive to “foster a sense of belonging and a campus culture that celebrates the unique ways we connect and contribute to UND.” One good way to do this is to be sure that we are paying our people a fair and livable salary.
Finally, you may remember when the medical student program at the SMHS underwent a successful reaccreditation process under the auspices of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) two years ago. There is a similar accreditation process conducted by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) that universities must undergo in accordance with requirements established by the U.S. Department of Education. Earlier this week, we welcomed the accreditation team assigned by the HLC to UND; such re-evaluations occur every 10 years. I participated in two of the sessions with the HLC team and things seemed to go very well indeed. Although we won’t hear back from the HLC for a while, every indication is that the visit went quite smoothly and without a suggestion of a major concern on the part of the survey team. So, good news, at least so far, regarding the re-accreditation status of UND.
Joshua Wynne, MD, MBA, MPH
Vice President for Health Affairs, UND
Dean, UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences
