https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1528686 Tue, 21 Jul 2026 04:16:07 GMT Wed, 4 Mar 2020 16:55:23 GMT Copyright © 2020 LeadingAge North Carolina https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1528686 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1528686

Have you moved your front line employees (or any group of employees) up to a greater base wage? An example would be moving all culinary servers from a $10 wage per hour to $15 wage per hour over the course of several years.

If you have done this or something similar, would you please share the steps you took to make this happen?

]]> Thu, 20 Feb 2020 20:23:11 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530373 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530373
A prime example is our CNA scale. In 2016 our scale started at 10.75/ hour with a max of 12.25/hour for 10+ years experience. For 2020, I’m happy to report our scale now starts at 14.00/hour with the max of 17/hour. We have accomplished dramatic increases such as this for many positions by first, prioritizing compensation in our budgeting process. Having the support of the Executive leadership team was critical. For HR, we have started the compensation conversation much earlier in the year than pervious, where we now discuss in the summer time prior to budget packets going out what types of increases we think we’ll need for the coming year. Leaders help HR by loosely tracking rejections of positions and how much candidates being offered elsewhere (if they reject a offer or leave for a new opportunity).

By starting the discussion earlier, HR can create spreadsheets of multiple drafts of compensation adjustment proposals that better helps Executive leadership plan the overall organizational budget. Our Controller has been effective with including all approved compensation drafts into his final budget approval so that are budgets are now more accurate than ever with FTEs and this helps our Executive Director make those final cuts to the budget actually seeing the whole picture.

We also have begun moving scales yearly even if we think we have been able to satisfactorily recruit for a role, we know it may not stay that way. So, for example, in most of our positions the standard COL increase of on average 3% would equate to around a .50 cent adjustment. If we move our payscales that same amount, there is minimal additional cost to the budget for current employees, but we have successfully increased our scale for incoming hires. This has been very effective and I think will continue to make a huge difference so that we do not fall behind on our wages.]]> Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:53:22 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530374 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530374
We have used several different methods to increase over the years. This year we focused on increasing holiday pay for all staff and shift differentials for nursing staff. We felt our wages were now where they needed to be but needed to beef up some of our extra pay options.

This is a really rough explanation but I hope it helps and will be happy to discuss it with anyone if they like.]]> Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:53:50 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530375 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530375 Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:54:06 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530376 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530376
The most important, new thing for us was implementing Shift Differentials this month. 2nd: $1.5/hour; 3rd: $2.5/hour.
]]> Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:54:18 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530377 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530377 Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:54:33 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530378 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530378
We evaluated what we could afford based on what the wage was for 1 adult with 0 children. This number has moved from 11.50 to 12.24 in two years. MIT evaluated what someone needs to make an hour to afford to live in our area.

We rolled this increase out to anyone making under the designated living wage at the beginning of the year. We also included additional increases based on their time here so that someone who was here for 10 years, wasn’t making the same as someone who was just starting. These increases were an additional $.25 for 1 to 5 years $.50 for 5-10 years and $.75 for 10+ and then capped where we would stop making those technical increases. For this last one, we did not provide in increase of any kind to anyone making over $14.00/hr.

Hope this helps!]]> Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:55:02 GMT https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530379 https://www.leadingagenc.org/forums/posts.aspx?topic=1530379 ]]> Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:55:23 GMT