Nancy Neff

UT Austin President Larry R. Faulkner has appointed an Ad Hoc Presidential Committee on Staff Compensation to advise the administration. The committee will report back to Faulkner, the executive officers and the director of the Office of Human Resources (OHR) on a periodic basis.

Faulkner also approved the establishment of a new compensation specialist position in the OHR. Dr. John M. Moore has been hired into that position and will staff the new committee. Moore, who has been a compensation consultant to a wide variety of industries and state agencies, also will be responsible for administering a data base containing labor market data from relevant industrial and higher education sources.

The charge of this presidential committee includes review of the University's Pay Plan, employee benefits, recruitment and retention concerns and the classification system itself. Faulkner will discuss the charge with committee members at their first meeting.

Dean Edwin Dorn of the LBJ School will serve as chairman of the committee. Three of its members -- Dorothea K. Adams, Brian E. Graham-Moore and Mary E. Knight -- served on the Compensation Advisory Committee, which gave its report to Faulkner last spring. Included among the recommendations of that report was the establishment of a compensation specialist position and the establishment of a new committee.

Other members of the committee, who will serve one-to three-year terms, are Donna A. Bellinghausen, Joanna Castillo, Dr. Reuben A. Gonzales, Joyce A. Lewandowski, Andrea M. Marks, Carol J. Sisson and Russell H. Walker. Sandra Haire, director of OHR and a member of the first committee, will serve on the ad hoc committee in an ex-officio capacity.

The specific charge of the committee is to

• Advise the president and the executive officers on policy, procedures and implementation of the University's Pay Plan, which is the compensation structure for classified staff. According to Haire, the committee also will provide advice on administrative and professional jobs.

• Review recommended adjustments to the Pay Plan based on surveys of relevant labor markets and the University's compensation philosophy.

• Make recommendations on such other staff compensation-related matters as pay levels for market-sensitive positions; job families with recruitment and retention concerns; the internal consistency of compensation across job categories; the structure of employee benefits and other information critical to future compensation planning.

• Investigate ways in which the University's current fringe benefit program and elements of non-monetary compensation could be expanded or otherwise modified beneficially.