Human Resources

We heard you. We interviewed Haverford College stakeholders to understand the current-state and challenges. The following opportunities were uncovered, which will be addressed through this initiative:

1. Define and articulate career paths and progression opportunities.
2. Empower staff managers to have career conversations with their team members.
3. Drive consistency in pay and career progression across divisions and departments.
4. Evaluate current compensation practices to ensure competitiveness to market.
5. Ensure pay equity in the institution.

Haverford College is working toward a future-state job architecture and compensation structure that is modern and will support the talent, career development, and compensation strategies now and in the future.

A job architecture is how we think about and organize our talent:

• What is the talent pipeline?
• How can we enable career growth?
• How can we encourage individual accountability and engagement with careers?

A job architecture provides:

• A common language to explain the job levels and roles within the College.
• Consistent criteria for decisions about learning and development, career paths, performance management, and other talent programs.

The new job architecture will support career growth:

• The job architecture will allow managers to better understand the skills and experience required for each job.
• Staff managers will be able to more easily guide staff to new positions by explaining what is expected of them with clearly delineated responsibilities for each job.

With a job architecture, staff know how their job is categorized and where their job fits within a clearly defined structure. As a result, they can better understand how their role fits into the College and better navigate future career opportunities.

Compensation benchmarking, also known as salary benchmarking, is a process in which an institution evaluates its compensation practices by comparing its pay rates, salary structures, and benefits to those of other institutions in the same industry, region, or labor market. The primary goal of compensation benchmarking is to ensure that our pay practices remain competitive and aligned with market standards. It will help us attract and retain talent, manage labor costs, and maintain a fair and equitable compensation system across the College.

As part of this work, we’ll be developing a job architecture that will impact all staff. We’re also analyzing compensation for both faculty and staff.

The project includes both job architecture for staff and a compensation study for faculty and staff. The job architecture being designed for staff will organize our jobs and help staff easily navigate career opportunities at Haverford College. Additionally, we’ll be developing a salary structure for staff, which will ensure our pay remains competitive and will drive consistency in how we make pay decisions. We’ll be assessing pay for faculty to ensure it remains competitive and fair.

At Haverford College, we are committed to creating an equitable environment and offering fair pay. In order to achieve this goal, we are taking a data-driven approach to building our new rewards programs and will be utilizing a variety of data sources, including data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) salary surveys. We’re in the process of defining our peer group, or the other institutions that we’ll compare our pay against, and will be working with key stakeholders to ensure the group selected accurately reflects our objectives.

We have a core team driving this work, which is comprised of representatives from Human Resources, Budgeting, Institutional Research, and the Provost’s Office. We’re also partnering closely with Senior Leadership, the Administrative Advisory Committee, FAPC, and Staff Association to guide and approve decisions.

The project is expected to be completed by June 2024, and implementation will likely occur later in 2024. We will gather feedback from stakeholders across the College throughout the initiative, and we will share what changes are being made as a result and how they impact individuals after the design is complete. We will share important updates with you throughout the initiative and provide comprehensive training once the work is complete to ensure you have the tools you need to best navigate the changes.

We’re still in the process of analyzing and designing a compensation structure, so individual pay decisions have not yet been determined. We will share impacts once they are finalized, but no faculty or staff member’s pay will decrease as a result of this initiative.

Our new staff job architecture will provide a foundation for Haverford College to create and define clear career paths. A well-structured job architecture typically includes various job roles or levels, each with specific responsibilities, skill requirements, and associated compensation. This hierarchy of jobs will form the basis for career progression within the College. As such, staff will be able to see how they can advance from one role to another by acquiring additional skills and experience or how their skills may apply to roles in other parts of the College. It will provide transparency and a structured framework for career development.

The new staff job architecture will focus on defining the structure of jobs within the College. It primarily addresses job content and compensation. As such, we don’t expect any changes to reporting relationships or day-to-day responsibilities as a result of this initiative. However, we are looking at titles to create more consistency and transparency around roles. We will share more information if we decide to change faculty or staff titles as an outcome of the review.

Yes, we are working with Mercer, a leading HR Consulting firm, to ensure that:

• We follow an objective process to identifying inconsistencies within the College and addressing them,
• We are aligning our pay practices with market standards to remain competitive, and
• We are benchmarking our pay practices with other institutions in the same industry, region, and labor market.