UI administrators look to provide professional training, career ladders
Another week, another staff member lost to Washington State University or Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories.
That seems to be the trend for Ron Smith, University of Idaho vice president of Finance and Administration.
Ron Smith
“It’s huge right now, and it all goes back to salary increases, we haven’t been able to keep up with market,” he said.
Smith said much of the staff turnover is from ITS employees and trade employees, such as mechanics, plumbers and carpenters who find higher salaries elsewhere.
“WSU and Schweitzer and other industries in the area, they are all paying more than us,” he said.
While increasing employee salaries is a top priority for UI administrators, Smith said there are other ways to incentivize employees to stay at UI.
Smith is in the process of forming a new committee to look further into the issue.
He said the committee would be tasked with identifying staff career ladders and creating related professional development programs.
The programs would be focused on teaching UI staff the skills needed to move up within their department or assume an open position at UI, which usually comes with a salary raise, he said.
Smith said he hopes offering professional development programs will incentivize staff to continue their careers at UI while also providing a boost to morale.
“They can see we are investing in them, and we’re going to give them an opportunity to move up in the organization,” he said.
Smith said the committee would begin to meet after Thanksgiving break and would include stakeholders from around campus, including representatives from Faculty Senate, Staff Affairs, Human Resources and General Counsel.
Smith said he hopes to have a plan of action put forth by the committee by the end of the academic year.
With expanded training programs, Smith said UI should conduct an internal search for qualified applicants for job openings before opening up the search and looking elsewhere to fill positions.
Although he hopes the committee’s plan would include incentives to staff members, Smith said UI should still raise staff salaries in order to prevent attrition.
Smith said troubles with staff salaries began in 2008, when the Idaho Legislature cut higher education funding by 30 percent.
While employees at peer institutions receive 2-3 percent salary increases annually, UI employees have only received a 4 percent salary increase since 2008, he said.
With the cuts in state budget, Smith said UI pays staff 16-20 percent less than peer institutions. He said UI upper administration has taken notice.
Smith said raising employee salaries by 4 percent is the top priority for UI heading into the legislative session. He said his department is looking at methods to fairly distribute a salary increase among all pay grades.
He said the goal of distributing a salary increase would be to ensure employees at low level pay grades are being paid a livable wage.
“It would be great, I think, if we could start there, getting the lower paid ones to a livable wage,” he said.
In the end, Smith said the extent of salary increases would depend on how much UI receives from the legislature.
Despite low salaries, Smith said he does not think it has affected the productivity at UI. Rather, he said the low pay leads to low staff morale within departments and often incentivizes people to look elsewhere for higher paying jobs.
“They can go to Washington State University for to 10 to 20 percent more than they are making here, and they don’t even have to move,” he said. “So it’s pretty easy for them.”
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]