While LSU President F. King Alexander announced system–wide pay raises for employees on July 26, executing the plan before next Friday is more complex than it might seem.
Before employees can receive raises, the Board of Supervisors must approve Alexander’s plan that details where the money is coming from.
According to the salary increase guidelines released by the University, faculty salary increases will be based on teaching evaluation, research, service activities and other scholarly activities
Robert Kuhn, vice provost and associate vice chancellor for budget and planning and interim CFO, said finding $8.3 million in the $45 million operating budget for raises was a priority for the administration, but faced with $25.7 million in additional fees the University had to pay, the administration “cobbled together” funds from different sources to cover the faculty pay raise.
“It’s just a matter of putting together the pieces,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn said money for the salaries came from increased enrollment, savings from closing certain scholarships like Bengal Legacy, refinanced bonds, position vacancies, savings on fringe benefits from a reduced number of employees, a rebate from Office Max and a transfer from the Student Tech Fee.
The raises will be based on employee evaluations, which are slightly different depending on the type of employee.
Donna Torres, associate vice chancellor of accounting and financial services, said there are four types of employees on campus: faculty, classified employees in trades and facility services, unclassified administrative staff and student workers.
Since classified staff falls under civil service guidelines, they must go through a new performance evaluation before they receive their raises on a later date designated by the State Civil Service, Torres said.
The new system is no longer a one-to-nine rating system but an evaluation system with three categories to see if employees are hitting their mark.
Kuhn said the new guidelines also change the monetary amount classified employees are eligible for.
“They have a different evaluation system and their policy has changed. Previously, the state civil service commission said everyone would be eligible for 4 percent or nothing,” Kuhn said
Now their raises could range between 0 and 4 percent instead of receiving all or nothing.
Kuhn said the administration came up with the 4 percent raise number by determining the amount of money available for raises and taking the base salary of those eligible for raises.
If the raises are approved by the Board, deans will be given a pool of money that is 4 percent of the base salary of their faculty to distribute based on evaluations and performance.
Additionally, certain colleges will be given more money to account for the differences in salaries professors receive, such as the College of Engineering.
As for the 2014-15 fiscal year, Kuhn said the administration is hopeful and planning for raises, but is unsure.
“The concept is, higher education is labor-intensive,” Kuhn said. “It certainly helps if they can see some financial reward associated with that.”
“The concept is, higher education is labor intensive.”