This month’s success story features our work with The City of Cleveland Heights. After living and working there for 20 years and then moving away…they become a client!
Cleveland Heights, Ohio is a diverse, progressive, vital suburb of Cleveland that is well known for its rich variety of homes, from front-porch Colonials and Arts and Crafts bungalows to stately Tudors, historic mansions, and innovative new condos. You’ll find tree-lined streets, great parks and recreational facilities, authentic “main-street” shopping, award-winning restaurants, entertainment, theaters, and more!
After a major revision to their job descriptions, the City wanted to determine how competitive their base compensation was compared to the talent market. Additionally, they wanted recommendations on compensation best practices and how to ensure their program stayed competitive to the market.
Anna Smith, Director of Human Resources said:
We were aware of OA’s work in the not-for-profit and public-sector environments, so when it was time to conduct an analysis of our base compensation, we contacted them for assistance. Public sector compensation can be challenging. On one hand it can be easier to locate data on positions because of the disclosure requirements for public entities. On the other hand, being able to pay competitively for top talent in a competitive labor market, coupled with the budget constraints in the public sector, can make it challenging. Also, pay structures in the public sector do not always keep pace with the private sector, which can be problematic when trying to update compensation programs. OA’s approach was to locate meaningful benchmarking date from both public and other sources and develop tools to show our positions relative to the market. Additionally, they provided insight into current compensation trends and strategies for implementing better approaches to attract, retain, and motivate our staff. The OA team was helpful in assisting with consensus-building with our leadership team so that we could implement the program we needed to reach our goals.Public sector employers are one of our specialties. Whether you are a municipality, agency, or public library system, we can help with your HR programs, including compensation benchmarking and pay structures. If you need assistance with your compensation programs or other HR consulting needs, contact us and check out our blog for more resources.