It's been 25 years since the city did a classification and compensation study. Where do city salaries stack up?

It’s been 25 years since the city of Albuquerque last performed a classification and compensation study to determine if its job descriptions are accurate and pay is fair and competitive.

In the years since 1999, things have changed.

The city has added perhaps thousands of positions, said city Human Resources Director Ian Stoker. In 2013, the state adopted a pay equity law, the Fair Pay for Women Act. In 2022, the city agreed to pay $17 million to female employees who alleged they were being paid less than their male counterparts, going back to 2013.

In short, a study was “overdue,” Stoker said.

“It’s a practice that is normally done at least at least every decade, if not every three to five years,” Stoker said.

That may happen, as one of the recommendations of the study was to more regularly evaluate classification and compensation.

There are also plans to adopt a new pay scale. The fiscal 2025 budget approved raises for nonunion employees — 5% for people making less than $50,000, 4% for those making less than $75,000, 3% for those making under $100,000 and 2% for people making more than $100,000. Union employees will see increases as previously negotiated.

Other salary changes will be reviewed as funding allows.

Equalizing the playing field

Stoker said that after the settlement, the city immediately identified jobs where two employees did the same work, but made different wages. The “interim wage adjustments” brought salaries up to whoever was paid the highest to “equalize the playing field.”

But employee surveys found not everyone was happy with the result.

“Many stated the solution implemented by the City further undermined employees, created larger pay inequities, and undermined morale even further,” the report said.

Stoker said concerns about widening pay gaps were “unfounded,” but said the efforts did result in “compression” — supervisors and supervisees making close to the same salary, which can harm morale. In some cases, Stoker said, lower-ranking employees ended up making more than their supervisor.

The implementation revealed that a comprehensive study was needed.

“On the cusp of that implementation, it came to a head that we really needed to look at our systems,” Stoker said. “Obviously, there was something about our rule structure that had gotten us into that position, and we needed to evaluate how we would go forward and not get into the situation again.”

Where do ABQ salaries stack up?

Mark Holcombe, project manager at Evergreen Solutions, the contractor that produced the report, said more than 200 jobs at the city were compared to proportional roles at local, regional and national groups.

“The city was about 5% behind its peers across all classifications,” Holcombe said.

That varies depending on the role. Some were much further behind, and others were above market rate. Roughly 70% — 166 jobs of the 232 surveyed — were below the market rate.

Stoker said anecdotally, there is an “ebb and flow” of staff between public agencies. Recently, some city employees have moved to the state.

“The state has had a lot of additional budget, windfalls from the oil industry and those kinds of things,” Stoker said. “So their salaries have gone up, and we have lost some employees.”

Holcombe said Evergreen did not recommend a blanket increase for employees, but rather an individualized take and a new, unified grading system for salaries.

But it’s not just about the dollar signs. Many of the employees surveyed highlighted the benefits offered by the city as a major perk.

“Working for the city, your reward, your compensation is a lot more than the paycheck,” Stoker said.

What’s next?

It took seven years to fully implement the recommendations of the 1999 study. This time, the city is pursuing a faster schedule, with a target three-year implementation.

In addition to the new classification system, Stoker said the HR department wants to bring roles up to the market rate and decrease the number of pay plans to “increase our ability to watch for parity and be responsive to market demands.”

As for unclassified employees — at-will employees with a different hiring process than classified employees — Stoker said that’s a bigger question. The number of unclassified employees has sometimes been a point of contention and the focus of a recent internal audit, which also recommended a classification and compensation study.

Unclassified employees historically have had “less robust” job descriptions, Stoker said. But the question is whether it’s better to define roles or allow for more flexibility, he said.

“We are definitely using this as an opportunity to review parts of that process,” Stoker said.