The University of Idaho’s Staff Council continued preparations for the upcoming changes in compensation and the Free Labor Standards Act (FLSA) during a Nov. 9 meeting.
UI Vice President of Finance Brian Foisy said he attended the staff meeting to give updates on market-based compensation and how the changes in the FLSA will affect staff at the university.
“I’d say at this stage of the game that the conceptual approval for market-based compensation is already done,” Foisy said. “The administration, and just about everybody we’ve talked to are on board with the concept.”
Because of the positive feedback from the UI community, Foisy said the university has prepared an item for approval for the State Board of Education (SBOE) that is set to be reviewed in December. Foisy said he and his colleagues recently completed a presentation to the SBOE Budget and Audit Human Resource Committee. He said the committee’s response was comforting.
“I thought this was something where we’d be peppered with a thousand questions from people who were skeptical,” Foisy said. “But don’t think that there was anything we discussed that was even the slightest bit controversial, or outside of the norm.”
Foisy said the committee did not have a single question for their proposal. He said this has only reaffirmed that UI can build a better compensation system.
“I think that was the best possible outcome,” Foisy said. “So, we are queued up to take this to the state board for full approval, and hopefully on Dec. 16 you will have a new compensation system.”
Foisy said now that full approval for market-based compensation is within reaching distance, the main focus is to find and solve every contingency for a broad variety of scenarios with UI employees.
“There are a thousand questions — like what if somebody works here and then leaves, and returns a year later in a slightly different position,” Foisy said. “So, we’re down in the weeds grinding through stuff like that.”
Foisy said the university is finding acceptable solutions to almost every questionable scenario that has been brought up so far.
Foisy also discussed further updates and what to expect in regard to the changes in the FLSA.
Staff Council Chair Greg Fizzell said the change to the FLSA requirements will raise the minimum salary test to determine if an employee would be classified as exempt or nonexempt starting Dec. 1.
Wesley Matthews, director of Human Resources, said something that affects a large group of people takes time to work out the exact specifics. But if the university does everything in the proper order, it will yield the best answers to employee’s questions. He said the process of determining every employee’s specifics is going smoothly, but it is a lengthy procedure.
Both Foisy and Matthews said all business in accordance with the recent FLSA amendments are going as expected or better.
“We are trying to minimalize the impact in as many ways as we can,” Foisy said. “Everybody from the president, to the provost, to the SBOE have been very supportive in our plea to not impact the employees as much as possible.”
Foisy said there has not been any kind of conflict in trying to protect the benefits of UI employees.
“We’ve simply had to make our case, and everybody has agreed,” Foisy said.
Andrew Ward can be reached at [email protected]