Milford city staff have a healthy work culture, but the city’s weakness is in its staff salaries, according to a new study.
Milford City Council heard the Compensation and Classification Study results at its May 14 workshop. Evergreen Solutions conducted the study and analyzed compensation and classification of city staff while focusing on increasing equity.
The consulting company helped put Milford’s pay plan in place several years ago and found that it is working well for employees.
Evergreen’s project manager Michael Misrahi noted a number of positives, including the work climate and employee satisfaction with benefits.
“Culture being front of mind in a positive [way] is not always the case,” Misrahi said. “That's not common to hear that. And so that really is a good notch in the city's favor, that this was something that we heard across a number of groups, and something you've been able to foster here within the organization.”
Misrahi also finds that the city does not have a hard time recruiting talent.
The study found some employees raised concerns about limited upward mobility, which Misrahi said can happen in cities around Milford’s size. He also found staff said their titles sometimes don’t fully represent the work they perform.
Misrahi added almost half of employees are paid on the lower end of their position’s pay range.
“There may be that you just had a rash of new hires because some folks may have retired out,” Misrahi said. “Could be a variety of reasons to contribute that, but something to keep an eye on. From an organizational perspective, you don't typically want a large portion of your workforce at the bottom of your pay range.”
The study’s recommendations include assigning and implementing pay grades to positions, which could result in some positions seeing larger adjustments than others.
Misrahi said in a perfect world, there would be a bell curve distribution with 25 percent of the workforce in the first and fourth quartiles and 50 percent near the midpoint.
Misrahi said that structure would encourage retention and competency of city staff.
