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University details market‑responsive pay reforms and faculty refinements at Duluth, Rochester and Crookston
Summary
Mary Roman Kuehl, senior director of total rewards, described job-title refinements, a new university salary database built from external surveys, campus market adjustments and targeted investments including prior $2,000,000 in recurring funding tied to the workforce reinvestment effort.
Mary Roman Kuehl, senior director of total rewards, told the Regents’ special committee the university has undertaken multi-year "market refinement" work to make job titles and salary structures more responsive to external labor markets.
"Over the past 8 years, the university has built a salary database that is as sophisticated as you would find at any large for profit organization in The Twin Cities," Kuehl said, describing a process that ties clearer job titles and agreed-upon market definitions to external survey medians released each January 1.
Kuehl said the work covers civil-service and P&A job families (18 of 20 job families have completed market refinements to date) and that the team is scaling refinements for faculty on satellite campuses. She said faculty market refinements at Duluth, Rochester and Crookston yielded more granular discipline-level medians and specific pay-correction steps for those campuses: for example, Duluth faculty whose pay ratios fell below a 0.75 comp ratio received adjustments to reach that ratio; Duluth’s overall comp ratio was reported at 0.92 and Rochester at 1.01 as of the 2024 update.
Kuehl said the university uses manager-targeted reports each January to show how individual pay compares to market medians and encourages setting aside dedicated market-adjustment funds at campus and unit levels so schools can address mission-critical roles that are behind market.
When regents asked whether the university can report how many employees are "masterful" yet paid low in their ranges, Kuehl said the PeopleSoft system does not store a discrete learner/mastery/exceptional (LME) field; therefore the administration cannot run a definitive systemwide query pairing mastery ratings to comp ratios. She said the team reviews comp ratios and works with campus leaders to prioritize corrections where data show consistent underpayment.
Kuehl framed the program as iterative: the system will update market medians each January 1, provide manager education and continue select market-correction initiatives tied to budget prioritization and the workforce reinvestment governance process.
President Cunningham and regents highlighted the strategic challenge of funding premium pay to recruit high-profile researchers; Cunningham said that bringing in game-changing talent will require dedicated strategic funds and integrated budget planning.
Kuehl closed by noting further planned refinements for remaining job families and continued manager education to make data actionable at the campus level.
