03-03-26 City Council Meeting Packet

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8 | 2025 Arthur J. Gallagher & Co Approach to the Project Our practice takes a thoughtful and collaborative approach to all our client engagements, where we work to ensure our efforts are ones which demonstrate how the Public Sector & Higher Education practice C.A.R.E.S. - collaborate/consult, advise/assess, recommend/resource, engage/endorse, and strategize/serve - about our clients and their needs. To that end, our project approach starts with our process and client communications. Our extensive experience has resulted in a comprehensive understanding of the scope of work described by the City. Additionally, we understand the importance of this study as one of many strategies to address current human resources issues and appreciate the delicate nature of public sector spending. Below are some key considerations we have in this type of project, followed by our approach to the areas identified by the City, our detailed work plan, and the estimated project timeline. Key Considerations: Leadership Support: Effective compensation reform requires consistent, visible leadership commitment at multiple organizational levels. We establish a leadership accountability structure that includes executive sponsors, department champions, and implementation teams with clearly defined roles. Leaders must actively communicate the program's importance, address concerns directly, and visibly support the process through each phase. We provide leaders with focused messaging tools and data points to effectively advocate for changes. Without this multi-level support structure, even technically sound compensation systems often encounter significant resistance during implementation. Internal Fairness and Equity: Our approach balances external market competitiveness with internal equity through comprehensive job analysis techniques. We conduct detailed comparisons across job families, reporting relationships, and responsibility levels to ensure logical compensation relationships. This includes specialized analysis of career progression paths and appropriate differentials between supervisory and non-supervisory roles. We implement specific methodologies to address compression issues, particularly between long-service employees and new hires with market-driven starting salaries. Our process identifies and remedies historical inequities while establishing defensible rationales for pay differences based on skills, responsibilities, and performance factors. Appropriate Timelines: We develop realistic project schedules based on organizational complexity and resources. This includes adequate time for comprehensive job documentation, employee input, leadership review cycles, and implementation planning. A typical comprehensive compensation project requires 6+ months for proper execution, including 2-3 months for thorough job analysis, 1-2 months for market research, and 2-3 months for implementation planning, noting that this work may happen concurrently across the life of the engagement. Accelerated timelines often compromise data quality and stakeholder buy-in, leading to implementation challenges and future rework. We establish appropriate checkpoints and quality controls to ensure thoroughness while maintaining momentum. Data-Driven with Human Oversight: Our methodology combines rigorous data collection with expert interpretation. We utilize multiple validated market sources appropriate for your sector, geographic region, and organizational characteristics. All job matches undergo multi-level validation checks to ensure accurate comparisons. This empirical foundation is then contextualized through structured consultant review panels that consider institutional history, strategic priorities, and unique operational factors as shared and iterated by our clients. We document both the data-driven recommendations and any exceptions to provide a clear, defensible audit trail. This balanced approach ensures decisions are not rigidly algorithmic while maintaining system integrity.