Staff Compensation Policies & Practices

The program serves as the foundation for ensuring the consistent application of salary-related decisions. It is designed to align with Middlebury’s compensation philosophy and objectives while maintaining compliance with applicable pay laws and regulations.

Philosophy

To fulfill its mission, Middlebury maintains a compensation program directed toward attracting, retaining, and rewarding a qualified and diverse workforce. While total compensation is the combination of financial rewards, such as base pay, generous benefits and time-off programs, professional development support, as well as the intangible benefits such as work-life balance, this policy describes only the staff compensation program.

Objectives

Our staff compensation program is designed to balance and address several key objectives, including:

• Maintaining external competitiveness –– our overall structure will maintain a competitive market position as measured by comparing salaries for benchmarked jobs against our defined labor markets.
• Developing and maintaining compensation structures and strategies that respond to, and support, organizational priorities, changes, and needs.
• Providing fair wages throughout an employee’s career and support of ongoing collaboration between managers and staff.
• Setting salaries for new employees at levels that recognize individuals’ ownership and impact while considering the salary levels of current employees within the same and/or similar jobs or roles.
• Reinforcing that all staff are valuable contributors to the mission of the organization.
• Being transparent and understandable to all staff members.

It should be noted that a certain amount of salary variation is inherent in our system (as it is in most compensation systems).  The compensation program itself – and this policy – are designed to function as a framework establishing the parameters within which these individual salaries are administered.

Administration

Job Descriptions

The foundation of our staff compensation program is accurate and complete job descriptions; the responsibility for the creation and maintenance of job descriptions is shared between the manager, the employee, and Human Resources. Employees and managers are responsible for reviewing and updating descriptions to reflect current responsibilities. Human Resources is responsible for ensuring: the consistency of descriptions, appropriateness of titles as well as required education and experience, and compliance with regulations such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Job Placement

Job descriptions are used to determine the primary focus of a job and to place it within our pay grade structure.  Job descriptions are reviewed by HR when new jobs are created and when there have been significant changes in the scope of the job. Human Resources is responsible for evaluating the correct placement of jobs within the compensation structure, taking into consideration input from the area manager(s) and (as applicable) employees.  It is important to understand that the comparison with market is based on the primary focus of the job and changing job titles, updating individual responsibilities, adjusting education/experience requirements in general will not impact the placement using market data.

Another important point to remember is that jobs are not reviewed according to the qualifications of the employee that happens to currently hold the job; job placements are based on the focus of the job and any job requirements, and these may differ from the qualifications of the current incumbent. 

Salary Structure

Each job is assigned to a grade within the structure, based on the median market rate of the benchmark jobs. Benchmark jobs are determined by Middlebury and are jobs within each pay grade that can be readily compared to the job market in terms of common characteristics, and for which market data is readily available in published market surveys. Our two pay grade structures consider geographic location. Current pay grade structures are available on the HR website.

Middlebury Campus-Based Programs:  The standard Middlebury College pay range structure applies to most staff jobs at the undergraduate College and other College-based programs such as Bread Loaf, IPOCs, etc. 

MIIS Campus-Based Programs:  The standard MIIS structure (“C” grades) uses the Middlebury pay grade structure with a geographical market difference.  This structure applies to most positions that are based at the Middlebury Institute and in Washington, D.C.

Currently the data on the external markets for benchmarked jobs is determined as follows:

• The external market is measured against data collected from three primary sources: College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA) salary surveys (for higher education related jobs), Salary.com, and Mercer.
• Defined perimeters have been identified to ensure that we are using market data from comparable institutions. Those perimeters are operating expenses ($140M - $560M), student enrollment (2500 - 8000), geography, and affiliation (private/public).
• Additional market information may be collected from other sources when data from primary sources is not available (generally only for highly specialized or technical jobs).
• Salary surveys are conducted on an annual basis to consistently gauge our current position relative to the external market.

Each grade within a pay structure has a stated salary range minimum, midpoint, and maximum.  These pay grades are broad and overlapping to accommodate the market(s) for the varying jobs within each grade.

Salary Structure Ranges and Individual Salaries

Generally, all employees’ salaries are expected to be within their assigned grade ranges:

• Employees will be paid at least the minimum of the pay grade assigned to their job unless the employee does not meet the minimum requirements of the job and is temporarily in a “trainee” status or if an employee is not eligible for increases due to current and documented performance issues.
• Placement within a grade range is managed with a skill matrix assessment focused on the impact and ownership shown by the employee in their role. Each staff member will progress through the stages in their career at a different pace and may stay in a given level for several years or indefinitely. There are four levels with the skill matrix: Learning, Growing, Thriving, and Leading. Grade minimums are tied to the Learning level and market medians are tied to the Thriving level.

It is important to emphasize that salary levels will be “capped” or “frozen” if an individual reaches the maximum of a pay grade to ensure that employees do not earn over the maximum.  The structure will be reviewed every year, so ranges may shift year over year. Increases in market may result in increases to the structure ranges. Decreases in the market shifts may result in no changes to the structure ranges. 

Pay Practices

A number of events affect employee salaries; the most common events and related pay practices are described below.  It should be noted that the determination of most pay changes involves a skill matrix assessment by the employee’s management team and an internal equity check by Human Resources.  An internal equity check requires: consideration of the salaries of employees in similar/related jobs within the organization as well as the salary of the supervisor/manager, the salaries of any subordinate employees, and the salaries of employees in related career paths, and finally, the appropriateness of the proposed salary within the assigned grade range based on the employee’s career progression.

Starting Pay

Starting pay is the rate initially offered to an individual not currently employed by Middlebury. Starting salaries are set by Human Resources and are established after consulting with the hiring manager on the candidate’s skill matrix assessment. Discretionary adjustments up to $3,000 may be applied, in increments of $500, as long as doing so does not exceed the maximum for the grade range. 

Responsibilities for Maintaining the Program

Human Resources

• Administers and interprets compensation philosophy and policies:
  • Calculates all pay adjustments
  • Calculates all new hire salary offers
  • Administers the annual increase process
• Monitors and evaluates compensation administration practices to ensure adherence to Federal and State laws/regulations and Middlebury’s compensation philosophy.
• Conducts annual external market reviews including comprehensive system-wide checks as well as job or department specific checks, as needed.
• Periodically reports compensation-related statistics to senior management.
• Monitors our various job markets and the effectiveness of our compensation policies and practices and makes recommendations for changes to senior management.
• Assists with the creation of job descriptions.
• Determines the placement of jobs within the grade structure

Supervisor/Manager

• Consults with HR in the planning stages of organizational changes which have the potential to impact classification and/or compensation of current employees.
• Ensures that job descriptions are kept up to date.
• Provides input into departmental factors that should be considered when calculating hiring salaries, promotional increases, etc.

Employee

• Notifies supervisor/manager of significant changes in scope of work (if supervisor/manager is not already aware of these changes).
• If requested, assists in the creation or revision of the job description.
• Reports any suspected pay errors or discrepancies to Human Resources immediately.