Look up what Manatee County government employees are being paid

Manatee County government will begin to address the stress in the workforce related to pay disparities in the next fiscal year.

Within the county’s tentative 2016-17 $571 million net budget, a reserve of $500,000 has been created to begin addressing the county’s pay compression issues.

“We have a workforce that has a lot of years of service, but there was a very large disproportion of people at the very beginning of the pay range,” County Administrator Ed Hunzeker said. “There has been, continues to be, projected to be stress in the workforce and we need to start addressing that stress in the workforce.”

A compensation study conducted by Evergreen last year estimated that 79 percent of Manatee County government salaries are below grade midpoints. To eliminate that pay compression, it would cost approximately $2.214 million annually for salaries only.

“Pay compression is the result of the market rate for a given job outpacing the increases historically given by an organization to tenured employees,” Hunzeker wrote in his budget message presented in June. “The study provided evidence that the county needs to address areas where compression has been established.”

The pay compression for employees paid from the general fund is the one under the most financial stress, Hunzeker said.

“There were pay compression issues in other funds that as we go through solutions we may need to address,” he said.

In the tentative 2016-17 budget, the Pay for Performance program, which was implemented three years ago, will continue. A total equal to 4 percent of budgeted salaries will be held in reserves to fund increases. Constitutional officers will receive the same funding for compensation increases based on the 4 percent but can elect how to distribute it among employees.

In the budget, salaries, which include benefits, comprise 40.6 percent, or $231 million. Of that, 21.2 percent, or $121 million, funds county employees under the Board of County Commissioners, while 17.4 percent funds Manatee County Sheriff’s Office salaries.

County department director annual salaries range from $107,369 to $154,648, and Hunzeker makes $206,086, according to human resources data reported as of June 30.

County commissioners are paid $79,238 each, which is set by the state.

Manatee County’s pay continues to lag behind surrounding counties, which creates a recruitment issue for the county, according to Hunzeker.

“We have other governments that are able to recruit our employees with higher pay,” he said. “Because of the aging workforce, we can project that we and they will be fishing in the same pond for filling our future vacancies and we need to be more competitive in order to be more successful in recruiting more employees.”

While the county has a number of options available to address the issue, they are not ready to declare which option they are going to use, according to Rod Barnes, the county’s human resources director. The county took some steps last year, he added.

“Those are things we are currently reviewing,” he said. “We have to look at what those options are and look at if we implement how much it will solve. We are just not ready yet to put that out there.”

Every year, the county sees a turnover of approximately 300 employees and if the market rate is increasing, the county has to have the ability to respond to , Barnes said.

“We have to move people along in their pay ranges to create space to hire people in at a rate the market is driving right now,” he said. “In order to do that, we have to get our own people out of the way.”

If the market is outpacing what Manatee County is doing, then they aren’t gaining on the marketplace, Barnes said.

“We are trying to respond to that to continue to provide high level of services but we are trying to do in means of affordability,” he said. “We are doing the best we can with resources we have. We are limited by our fiscal resources.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2016 at 8:54 AM with the headline "Look up what Manatee County government employees are being paid."