The University Medical Center debuted a new pay system this month designed to improve employee retention and recruitment.
Health system employees recently received their first paycheck under the new system, and many saw a pay increase.
The new system, which went into effect Oct. 2, will increase the majority of employees' compensation, said Robert Cofield, associate vice president for hospital and clinic operations.
"No one saw a cut in their pay," Cofield said. "Over three-quarters of the employee population saw some increase in compensation."
In creating the new system, hospital administrators worked to narrow pay grades and the job descriptions within them to better match positions with their market rate, Medical Center spokesperson Peter Jump said.
"We went from 19 pay grades in the old system - they were pretty wide in their descriptions and pay range - and what we want to do now is to more accurately target the pay for specific pay descriptions," Jump said. "So now we've got over 100 pay grades."
Through the new system, employee pay will be matched competitively with market values to better attract and retain employees, he explained.
"We've surveyed the market for those pay descriptions," Jump said. "Some of those surveys were of small, local markets for [positions] like bus drivers, then others were markets that were much bigger, for example the states on the East Coast, where we're in competition with other elite medical centers. For the more highly skilled jobs, we've compared them to those jobs in those centers, and evaluated the market rates."
As the Medical Center continues to grow and develop, Cofield said he believes that the "retention of our existing employees and recruitment of new employees," will be crucial to the center's success.\nUniversity spokesperson Carol Wood noted in an email that despite state budget constraints, which have forced the University to freeze faculty salaries since December 2007, the administration has not laid off any employees during that time period.
"Throughout this time the [University] has looked for other ways to reward employees and to attract and retain them, including usage of the rewards and recognition program [and] increasing benefits while at the same time holding down the cost to employees," she said.
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