The first stage of changing the way City of Greensboro employees are paid will be in the budget presented to the City Council on Tuesday, June 15.
Beginning the move away from the current merit system of awarding raises to employees and to the step plan is currently in the budget according to Mayor Nancy Vaughan.
At the City Council work session on June 7, Vaughan, along with Councilmembers Justin Outling, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Nancy Hoffmann, opposed the move to the step plan, while Councilmembers Sharon Hightower, Tammi Thurm, Michelle Kennedy and Goldie Wells all expressed support.
Councilmember Yvonne Johnson was absent, which left the City Council with four in favor and four against.
Vaughan said that the city staff determined that a majority of the City Council was in favor of moving employees to the step plan.
If that is the case, then Johnson must have said she was in favor of the step plan, giving it a council majority.
The issue doesn’t involve a great deal of money in the $618 million budget, somewhere around $100,000, but Vaughan noted that it was changing the “philosophy” on how city employees should be compensated.
Under the current merit system, employee raises are determined based on their evaluations within the range set by the City Council.
The step plan pays all employees on the same step the same salary and they receive the same raise.
Abuzuaiter said that it appeared to her that the step plan would encourage “mediocrity.”
Abuzuaiter also noted that more than 1,000 employees responded to a survey and 56 percent were in favor of the current merit system while only 22 percent were in favor of the step plan and 22 percent were undecided. Abuzuaiter said with such overwhelming support for the current system it didn’t make sense to change it.
Hightower has been pushing for the step plan for years because she said that supervisors didn’t award the raises fairly.
Thurm only agreed to support trying the step plan after she was assured the city could go back to the merit system after trying the step plan for a year.
Step right to the bottom of employee satisfaction and retention when lackluster coworkers get raises and superstars languish with no incentive to do more than the minimum. More leftist feel good nonsense.
If you only knew how the game is played…..
Let’s say you have a ‘Tim’ working with 4-5 other Tims on a step. But this is your golden boy Tim and you want him bumped up.
Come up with a nifty sounding new title and run it through personnel with (of course) a recommedation that ‘this’ job be a higher step classification. There you are! Your Tim is promoted, paid better and you have personnel’s blessing.
Fiction? No. Just investigate how many different “titles” the city has for the number of employees.
What people get wrong about the step plan isn’t that it offers a standard raise regardless of performance. It’s that it doesn’t help people to get on different steps. Standardize raises can account for inflation and shared socioeconomical issues. Merit should still be rewarded with moving up to the next step. It isn’t either-or. This system will likely appear more fair outwardly, but if we track the promotions we’ll still see bias OR this will get people stuck on their “step” and contribute to a continued and widening wealth gap.
Well, life is not fair. Get over it. With step raises, we sink even faster into mediocraty.
With this council, what would you expect?
Oh, the headline above depicts men working on street repair. Where did you get that photo? Asheboro? Certainly not in Greensboro. Or at least, not at W. Market and Guilford College Rd. Road workers there are more scarce than (fill in your own comparison). I remember seeing a couple long ago and far away.
This new plan will make it harder to dismiss under performing employees.
Right! Or you can send them over to the USPS.
The step plan is the same as paying a burger flipper $15.00 an hour. Part of Ovomits plan to redistribute the wealth. Doesn’t matter if you can do your job or not. Snowflake mentality
Ridiculous! No respect for current employees. 56% of employees are AGAINST this.
Politics are always put ahead of the people’s wishes in Greensboro.
No wonder Durham is leaping ahead of Greensboro.
Whenever it is decided we have an election it’s time for a clean sweep. But wait, the mediocre employees, or worse, will pay back their Master, Sharon Hightower, for making sure they get the same raise the good employees get. RIDICULOUS
Does MS Hightower have any evidence or documented proof that the supervisors didn’t award raises fairly,or is that just more conventional wisdom out there somewhere.
Just making statements like that doesn’t make it so.Is anyone in that group paying attention to anything?
This will just cause the best employees to go elsewhere where their work will be recognized and rewarded,What is left will be-well- what the city deserves.
Sad.
I’m glad to see even though the majority or responding employees, the one’s that care, say that they are opposed to the step plan our great elected officials have decided to do what they want to do anyway. Reward no performers the same as high performers. Sounds just like themselves. It’s election time if they ever allow it to happen. I guess the longer they put it off the less they think anyone cares.