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May is salary increase month, and we’ve received a few questions about changes to the salary system that I hope I can clear up. The merit system was not functioning as an actual reward for good performance. It was effective at was helping new staff reach job value quickly, but this resulted in a practice of hiring staff at a lower salary initially because the merit system promised to bring them up to job value.

It was then nearly impossible to get meaningful further increases after reaching job value, regardless of performance.��The system made it difficult to apply cost-of-living adjustments fairly, as scale increases secured in salary discussions were skewed by the formula.��Tying salary increases to subjective performance measures instead of cost of living is an outdated method that can easily be abused and applied inequitably. Additionally, the salary pools, which most people didn’t even know about let alone understand, introduced major inequities between units on campus with zero transparency.

Moving forward, an across-the-board approach will ����DZ��������everyone with a fair, transparent, and predictable increase. No more complicated calculations or waiting for your salary advice every year—the scale increase in the salary agreement is the increase you’ll get.

In the transition, new staff who were actively working towards job value are not getting the significant increases they were promised. We have highlighted this issue to the administration and are collaborating with them to find a solution to support new staff who are in this unfair position.

We’ve been hearing these concerns about the merit system from staff for decades, along with requests for more fulsome performance development. The Strategic Talent and Performance Framework was born out of those concerns (among other issues) and has created an opportunity for the University to update this broken system. The Framework project team is still developing what employee recognition will look like in the future. I do know that performance development will happen throughout the year, and you won’t have to wait until the last minute to hear how you’re doing and what your salary is going to be. If you have any ideas on what employee recognition could or should look like, let me know and I’ll bring them to the committee. We are still waiting to hear what staff consultation will look like.

On a related note, we’ve received some questions about the budget projections showing a 0% increase the next few years. In the February Area Reps meeting, UW President Vivek Goel clearly noted that “it's certainly not to be taken that there would be no salary increase; it is to say that it is uncertain at this point as to what that might be.”