Staff Compensation Study

An important strategic goal for the University is to maintain a staff compensation program that provides fair and competitive compensation to attract, retain, and engage talented individuals. In 2020, the Office of Human Resources launched an important project to review and revise our staff classification and compensation program. We partnered with Segal, a nationally recognized human resources consulting firm, to ensure Florida State University operates under a competitive and fair compensation program that reflects our current culture and work environment.

On the road to developing the new Staff Compensation Program, FSU and Segal:

• Met with a variety of stakeholders to understand perspectives on compensation as it is today and desires for a future state.
• Developed a compensation philosophy that articulates the University’s strategy and guiding principles for how pay will be managed.
• Defined appropriate comparison markets that were used to benchmark staff jobs.
• Reviewed approximately 6000 staff position descriptions across 240 job classifications to ensure appropriate titles and mapping into a refined classification structure. As a result, 40 new job classifications for staff will be added to our system.
• Conducted an assessment to understand how FSU salaries compare externally in the market.
• Designed a compensation structure for staff that reflects market data, practices within higher education, and the financial resources of the University. 

Compensation Philosophy
FSU’s compensation philosophy incorporates a blend of stakeholder perspectives, current practices, and policies reflective of effective practices in higher education. Some key elements of the philosophy include:

• Program Focus: The compensation program balances external competitiveness with the University’s needs, financial resources, and relative value within the University among similar jobs. An individual's base salary reflects the value of the job in the market, the value of the job to the institution, and the capabilities of the individual.
• Comparison Market: A comparison market defines the organizations against which FSU will benchmark its compensation. 
• Total Compensation: While base salary is the primary method of compensating staff, other important components of compensation at FSU include health and retirement benefits.
• Program Maintenance: FSU will maintain appropriate base salaries through regular updating of job descriptions, monitoring of the market on a periodic basis, and periodic updates of the salary programs to ensure they provide competitive salary opportunities. In addition, periodic reviews of incumbent salaries are conducted to ensure internal equity.

 Next Steps
We are pleased to announce that effective November 25, 2022, we will begin implementing the new Staff Compensation Program. At that time, we will bring everyone into the new structure. This is an important step to better align our salaries to market and meet the evolving needs of the University and its valued staff. During this transition, most staff employees will move into a new pay band. Some individuals, not all, may receive a reclassification to a new title and/or a salary adjustment based on the study results. Following this step of the implementation phase, we will focus priorities on assessing individual placement in the newly assigned pay bands to further address compression and pay equity.

We understand that you may have many questions at this time. Additional details on the project steps and goals, as well as FAQs, can be found on the Classification and Compensation Redesign webpage. We will also follow up with additional communications to department leadership with information on what the new compensation program means and the impacts to each employee. 

We appreciate your continued support as we head into the implementation phase of the project. 

Questions? Please contact Compensation Services at compproject@fsu.edu.