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Administrative Staff Council was eager to hear from Charles Middleton, provost and vice president for academic affairs, the status of the policy being considered for merit raises and the evaluation process at its Feb. 4 meeting.
"A merit-based system of evaluation and reward is going to happen. The trustees want merit-driven raises and have challenged us to develop a system together," Middleton told ASC.
Administrative staff's challenge in devising an evaluation plan is more difficult than that of faculty because administrative jobs are so diverse, he said. He recommended as a starting point individual work plans to be drawn up by the employee and the supervisor. Then, at the end of the year, it can be determined whether the employee has met or perhaps exceeded his or her goals for that period.
He would like to avoid an overly-refined merit-based system, which he said hinders community building. Also, the amount of money the University has to spend on this is not large enough to allow such a system to function effectively. "A 3 percent increase (2.3 percent increase for Bowling Green) is not enough to run such a system. Six percent is," Middleton said.
Whatever form the system takes, expectations must be made clear and employees evaluated continuously and fairly. Any plan, even if it seems to be working well, should be regularly reviewed and refined, Middleton said.
Middleton described a typical merit system made up of three categories: meritorious, in which the employee has met the defined goals for the year and qualifies for the merit pay; highly meritorious, in which the person has accomplished some extraordinary things or gone far beyond expectations and qualifies for a larger sum; and not meritorious, when for whatever reason, the person has not met his or her goals for the year.
Most people will fall into the meritorious or highly meritorious levels, Middleton said.
Some small fraction of employees in any given year might fail to attain their goals and receive no raise.The money not spent on these employees might not go back into the pool but be spent on professional development efforts for the whole community. Thus, not awarding merit raises should not be looked upon as a money-saving strategy.
Middleton said the document currently being developed by Faculty Senate is a very good start in this direction though he was eager to see what modifications the senate would propose.The ASC Personnel Welfare Committee has been examining this proposal and circulated it at the Feb. 4 meeting for consideration by council. In addition to the three categories of merit, the senate has included a proviso that the entire process be reviewed and adjustments made every five years in order to make the rewards more equitable.
A council member asked what effect a merit system would have on employees who are at or near their salary caps and whether this would remove incentive to strive for higher goals. Middleton responded that in these cases, supervisors should talk with the employee about his or her career goals and whether perhaps cross-training, further schooling or even moving into a different area might be advisable.
He encouraged all employees to consider applying for different jobs on campus, "even if it's a stretch. Even if you don't get the job, at least it will be known that you are interested in moving up and that can be taken into account when planning other changes, which wouldn't have been known if you never applied."
In answer to a question concerning whether the Early Retirement Incentive Program might be made available one more year to administrative and classified staff, Middleton said the issue has yet to be addressed but that he was concerned that to implement such a program may be possible only by reducing the size of the administrative staff permanently. It is important that the University make this decision very soon so that people considering retirement know what to expect.
President Ribeau will attend the next regularly scheduled ASC meeting on March 6 to answer further questions. An on-call meeting has also been set for 1:30 p.m. March 13 in the Alumni Room of the University Union so that the Personnel Welfare Committee may present several proposals it has been working on, including one concerning the merit issue.