A salary survey undertaken by Union County showed that 24 employees were underpaid in the estimation of the Johanson Group, a Fayetteville-based consulting firm contracted by the Quorum Court in March.
During the Quorum Court’s regular meeting on Thursday, Bruce Johanson, a principal partner and co-owner of the firm, made a presentation on the group’s findings.
The survey involved first having job descriptions written for all non-elected positions in the county. Those jobs were then rated on a 15-factor scale devised in the 1980s by the Johanson Group, which has worked with other counties in the state on similar salary surveys.
The firm’s copyrighted job rating system is broken up into four categories: knowledge and skill requirements, responsibilities, contacts/human relations and efforts.
The 15 factors the rating system considers are the position’s required general experience; managerial experience; education; initiative and ingenuity; mental demand; problem solving capabilities; supervision responsibilities; responsibilities for county funds, equipment and property; accuracy responsibilities; accountability; contact with public; contact with other employees; machine and computer operations; working conditions; and physical demands.
“What we’re doing is we’re dissecting each of the jobs and saying ‘what’s that internal value for each of the positions?’” Johanson explained. “Before we even look at market, we’re saying how are each of our positions valued, and the common denominator is our 15 factors.”
Once jobs are rated according to the firm’s scale, the current pay for each position is compared to the pay similar employees receive in comparable settings.
In Union County’s case, the pay scales were compared to other Class IV counties, including Baxter, Boone, Greene, Hot Springs, Independence, Miller and Mississippi counties; the City of El Dorado; one local, private company Johanson did not name; the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data on pay scales in south Arkansas; and compensation data from a subscription-based data service.
Based on the firm’s analysis, Johanson said 24 county employees fell below what they would recommend as a minimum salary for their positions, while two landed above the maximum recommended salary.
“To get to being competitive … we’ve created proposed salary ranges,” Johanson said. “For example, the top position is the Chief Deputy Sheriff … By position, it cascades down.”
Minimum, midpoint and maximum pay grades
A graphical comparison of the county’s current pay scale showed that the lowest paid county employees, which the Johanson Group classified as having the lowest “job value,” made less than comparable employees in other Class IV counties, the City of El Dorado and private jobs.
The base pay for a Union County employee is about $20,000 each year, according to the Johanson Group’s report.
However, as “job value” grows, so does a worker’s pay. Once a county employee starts making $35,000 or more, they surpass the other Class IV county pay scales, but they are still making less than comparable workers in the City of El Dorado and in private jobs.
“When you take all of the market data and compare that with your current pay structure, Union County is 6.18% behind market based on the 11 sources of data that you see here. When we convert from points to pay grades, it moves it up just a little bit to 6.35%,” Johanson said.
The Johanson Group made salary recommendations for each position in Union County.
For those who made less than the minimum pay grade recommended for their position, Johanson said the county should consider raising their salaries either to the minimum recommended rate, or by 5%, whichever was greater.
He said no reductions in salary should be made for non-elected workers, but that for future recognition of those employees’ performances, the county could consider one-time bonuses rather than pay raises.
Johanson also suggested that the county could consider raises for other employees that do fall within the recommended salary ranges based on those workers’ performances and where they fall in their salary ranges.
“When we ran the analysis … there were 24 employees that were under their position minimum. To move them to the minimum for their position is going to be about 1% of payroll, or roughly $50,000 to $52,000,” Johanson said. “With the overall variance of 6.35% … minus that 1%, you’ll see my third bullet point is to use that remaining 5.35% to allocate to the remaining 143 employees based on performance and where they’re located within their respective salary ranges.”
Elected officials
The firm also compared the salaries of elected officials to those of the same officials in other Class IV counties. According to a report Johanson distributed at the meeting, all of Union County’s elected officials make more than the average of all the other Class IV county officials.
For example, Union County Judge Mike Loftin has an annual salary of $71,541, more than $7,000 above the average salary for the other county judges in Class IV counties. Baxter County’s county judge makes more at $77,200 per year, but all other judges in Class IV counties make between $19 and $22,876 less than Loftin each year.
Sheriff Ricky Roberts makes $73,016 per year, almost $10,000 more than the average of other Class IV county sheriffs. Again, the Baxter County sheriff makes more at $74,900 per year, while other Class IV county sheriffs make between $1,494 and $23,878 less than Roberts annually.
“As you can see, we’re right at 100%, 105%, 110% ahead of the average,” Johanson said. “The other elected officials are 85.5% to the average.”
Johanson did note that Hot Springs County, where the county judge and sheriff’s salaries are both under $50,000 per year, was a bit of an outlier when compared to other Class IV counties where annual salaries for those positions range from $56,000 to $77,000. With Hot Springs County taken out of the equation, the variances between Loftin and Roberts’ salaries and the salaries of other Class IV judges and sheriffs are 107.4% and 111.9%, respectively.
“Adjust the county judge and county sheriff by 3 to 5%,” Johanson said. “The reason why I’m doing that … the other elected officials were falling behind, so we can try to push them up a little harder using that 5 to 10%.”
Survey purposes
Loftin said in February that once the salary survey was complete, the Quorum Court could begin to consider raises for county employees. Last year, the body approved 3% raises for all county employees except Union County Sheriff’s deputies, who were to receive 6% raises; however, they rescinded the raise ordinance in March 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic hit Arkansas.
“It’s good to know what our competition is,” said District 7 JP Johnny Burson in March. “What we really want to compare it to, I think, is to compare it to the other counties who are working under the same constraints as us.”
On Thursday, Burson asked whether the survey had taken other Class IV counties’ budgets into consideration when writing its recommendations.
“I didn’t look at the financial budget; we looked more at the dynamics of the counties,” Johanson said. “Looking at the makeup, the breakdown of the employee size and what they cover, looking at it more from that perspective.”
District 9 Justice of the Peace Benny Vestal asked Johanson if he thought the county might be over-staffed, but Johanson said that isn’t something the firm considers when performing salary surveys.
Johanson did say that the market data the firm collected for the survey would be out-of-date in two or three years and urged the county to take up the recommendations sooner rather than later so they could stay competitive.
“Pretty interesting,” said District 6 JP Cecil Polk.
District 1 JP Mike Dumas, who chairs the Quorum Court’s Finance Committee, said the committee would begin meeting in the next couple weeks to consider the survey’s findings and Johanson’s recommendations.