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Consultant presents pay-study options to Neosho County, shows multi-year cost scenarios
Summary
The Honor Group consultant presented a C3 pay-study to Neosho County commissioners outlining internal job grading, step structures, and three implementation cost options; commissioners asked for benefit-cost detail and departmental impacts before any decision.
A consultant from the Honor Group described a countywide compensation review and presented implementation options and cost estimates to the Neosho County Board of County Commissioners on June 17, saying the package includes job evaluation, market benchmarking and a step-based salary structure intended to improve recruitment and retention.
"The retirement cliff that is looming for a lot of employers in the public space" was identified as a key risk by the presenter (Honor Group consultant, identified in the meeting as Philip). He said the firm uses a "C3 compensation blueprint" that combines an objective point-factor job evaluation with national, state and local salary benchmarking.
The consultant presented three implementation options and projected budget impacts: - Option A: Address pay-line compression and align scale minimums; estimated gross cost presented in the discussion was about $415,000 (the consultant said that figure includes a fuller cost-of-living and compression adjustment; benefit/ employer-tax impacts would raise the final fiscal-year cost). - Option B: A small cost-of-living adjustment plus compression and minimum adjustments; presented total roughly $433,000 when combined with the same compression adjustments and initial COLA estimate. - Option C: A smaller up-front package intended to be phased; the consultant presented a first-year net cash impact near $214,000 with a remaining compression correction of roughly $218,000 carried to a subsequent year.
Commissioners asked for additional detail on employer benefit and tax multipliers. The consultant said benefit and employer-cost add-ons were currently estimated in the 33–36% range but that final numbers depend on the county's benefits package and would be refined once commissioners chose a preferred scenario. "It's really just a matter of how do we best find that balance and that alignment between kind of the competing, limited dollars," the consultant said.
Why it matters: county officials were shown that 65 employees would require pay alignment to eliminate internal compression, with seven employees below the proposed minimums; the consultant said the average adjustment for those affected employees would be several thousand dollars annually and that the most impacted individual gap presented was about $7,900.
No vote or implementation decision was made. Commissioners and staff asked the consultant and county HR for department-level impacts, a precise employer-benefit multiplier, and a schedule for phased implementation. County staff said they would return to the commission with additional cost breakdowns by department and options to phase the work over multiple years.
