Law Enforcement Agency

Structuring a Complex Workforce

Challenge
This law enforcement agency enforces the laws of the state and maintains the parish's prison system. As a recognized leader in comprehensive law enforcement and correction programs, this agency includes three main workforce divisions with more than 900 employees in 70 different job classifications. Recognizing its broad range of responsibilities and complex workforce, the agency engaged SSA to evaluate its current job descriptions and compensation structure for one of its main divisions.

Approach
SSA interviewed 10 agency executives to gain background and insight on the organization’s compensation objectives and its current salary structure. The project team developed a Job Analysis Questionnaire to determine the duties, responsibilities, scope, and job functions of every employee within the division, resulting in the development of 29 job descriptions. To benchmark where the agency's salary structure fell within the market, SSA collected compensation survey data of competitive practices for 35 jobs, and conducted a custom survey of similar organizations to compare pay rates for eight additional positions.

Impact
SSA discovered the agency's salaries did fall in line with the market; however, significant market variance among individual positions within the organization was prevalent. SSA recommended the agency implement a step salary structure to help standardize its salary structure and minimize confusion and disruption moving to a new system. SSA advised the agency to ease into a market-based salary structure in the future to become more market competitive.

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