There have been a number of things happening with the salary study project. First, Gina Toman accepted a full-time job offer from another college and left last month. It is a good job and I wish her well. However, it left us with only one trained evaluator (Ed Flotten). To take up the slack, Larry Pile is now spending about 80% of his time working on the project and another person in HR is helping with data input. Because of this, the schedule has slipped from a target date of the end of June to the end of August. They may be done sooner, but the new target date is reasonable considering the amount work still to be done.

As of the last count I have, around 70% of the questionnaires have been returned. Larry and Ed have been working on the benchmarks and should have most of them evaluated and in the system by now. They expect to go to Boston to get market data within the next 3 weeks or so.

In the meantime, we have had all kinds of trouble with the consultant on this project (Wyatt - now Watson Wyatt Worldwide). They have not returned phone calls or E-mail and have been difficult if not impossible to deal with. We still need them for three things: 1) software support, 2) benchmark validation, and 3) market data.

We have found a couple of bugs in the Wycomp software (mainly in the export and import modules) and have had trouble in the past (December through March) getting Wyatt to acknowledge them, much less fix them. During the last month or so, however, we have received new import and export programs which seem to work better, but have found another bug which affects a date in one of the fields. They are working on it. I expect these bugs to be fixed in the near future, but I don't know what kind of support we can expect when we implement the system. This has to be resolved.

We have always had our benchmark choices validated by Wyatt consultants to make sure they cover a wide range of salaries, job families, campuses, genders, etc. We have to make sure the benchmark sample is truly representative of the diversity of jobs in the unit. The consultants have ALWAYS confirmed our selections in the past and should do so again since the same methodology is being used.

We expect to get current market data from salary surveys in the Wyatt library in the near future. If Wyatt is not available, we can get the data from other sources (Mercer, CUPA, etc.), but would prefer to get most of it from one library that includes all these sources.

Wyatt has been a real problem. We found out a couple of weeks ago that the consultant who has been working with us since 1990 and who presented a training session in Augusta to HR people from the campuses in early December is now out on "disability leave" and we have a new consultant (really new: he was hired around April 1). Since the University hires Wyatt to do benefits consulting/auditing to the tune of $400,000 per year, they should be responsive to our needs. Tracy Bigney (from UMS Human Resources) has been in contact with VPs and the president of the consulting division of Wyatt to try to straighten this out. I'll keep you posted on developments.

To summarize, the consultants seemed to disappear from mid December until April and would not return calls. This situation seems to be getting better (at least on the software end), but we still have serious problems with their performance. Gina left in March and Larry is putting 80% of his time into the project. As a result, the target date has slipped from 6/30 to 8/31. About 70% of the questionnaires have been returned, but 30% are still out. The validity of the data we get from the system and the cost estimates to fix salaries depends on getting as many of the jobs into the system as possible. If you have not returned your questionnaire, please do so as soon as possible.

We have told the University in negotiations that we have to have some kind of agreement on the salary study this time around. We cannot complete the bargaining on this issue, however, until we get reports from the project. We hope to have a tentative agreement before this contract runs out at the end of June, but I don't know if we will make it. It depends on the progress of the salary study project and how much the University wants a contract. If they will work with us, we will work with them. On the other hand, if they just say "no" to everything we propose, this could be a long process. I hope it goes well.

Meanwhile, the MEA has offered to support us in any way they can to help us get this resolved. We also are looking at other options to drum up support for this project at the highest levels of the administration and in the Legislature. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to pass them on.

Bruce R. Littlefield   Manager of Computing and Network Services 
Tel: (207) 581-2238    Electrical and Computer Engineering
Fax: (207) 581-2220    University of Maine
brucel@eece.maine.edu  110 Barrows Hall, Orono, Maine 04469-5708