Compensation

Position review FAQ

General information

No, unless the major organization you are in (e.g., medical center, EVP division, college, etc.) has locally established policies or requirements that need to be followed. Contact your administrator or manager to learn the policy for your organization.

The University’s equal opportunity practices require that we ensure that employees in the Professional Staff Program were hired through an open, competitive recruitment process. If a position was not filled through a competitive recruitment, an individual cannot be placed in the Professional Staff Program through the position review process. You will have to create a position in Workday for the proposed professional staff position and fill it through recruitment.

Form preparation and completion

This question is prompted based on your application’s macro security setting. Enabling or disabling the macros will not affect our forms, which do not use macros.

Yes. While the forms were designed to be completed electronically using Microsoft Word and have fields that can expand to accommodate the information entered, they can be completed manually. If you complete a form manually and do not have enough room on the form, attach additional documents.

We recommend that you always download a copy of the forms you need from the position review website to obtain the current version of a form.

Do not use this form for classified reclassification requests, for temporary professional staff positions, or for recruiting for professional staff positions.

If you are unsure of what to propose for job profile, job code, or monthly salary to propose, enter the phrase “PLEASE CALL TO DISCUSS” and a Compensation staff member will contact you to discuss these issues.

The form generates this error message when a calculation results in a “division by zero” (which is not allowed mathematically). This is typically caused by leaving one of the salary fields blank. When the salary numbers are filled in, the error message goes away.

Include the following information, as appropriate, in your justification:

  • What has changed in the position’s duties and responsibilities
  • Why these changes have occurred
  • What effect will/has the changes in the position’s duties have/had on others in the organization
  • Will former duties be shifted to others and if so, will any positions be back-filled as a result
  • Any additional information that would be helpful in reviewing the request

For In-grade Salary Adjustment requests, please provide additional details supporting the reason you selected in Section C of the Compensation Change Request Form.

For Job profile Change Only requests: Please explain why this title change is being requested. If the new title will be under a different professional staff exemption, please provide information to support that position’s exemption under the new professional staff exemption. Consult the Professional Staff job profiles web page for information on professional staff titles and their exemptions.

Yes, if Compensation has previously assigned the position to an overtime exempt job profile and the position should be made overtime eligible because it no longer meets the Fair Labor Standards Act’s salary basis test for overtime exemption. Complete only the title change sections of the Compensation Change Request form and note the reason for the change in the form’s justification section. You can use this process to request that a position that is now overtime eligible, but was previously overtime exempt, be reassigned to an overtime exempt job code. Contact Compensation if you have questions.

Yes, if your organization chart contains all of the information requested in the organization chart section of the Professional Staff Position Description Form. Organization charts sent electronically should be Microsoft Word, Power Point files, or PDF.

Professional staff position reviews

Accurately complete all required position review documents. If you have any questions prior to submission of the position description or questionnaire documents, please contact Compensation.

While a position review can be requested at any time, it is important that the employee be in the position long enough to demonstrate their capability of working at the level sought in the position review. Individual organizations may have policies specific to this question. Please check with your organization’s human resources administrator.

Job profiles are general titles organized by Professional Staff Program exemption. The Professional Staff Job Profiles web page provides a list of professional staff job profiles listed by exemption group. If you do not find a specific title that you feel is appropriate, select one of the general titles. You may use a business title for the position, however, for the purposes of a position evaluation only job profiles are used.

No. It is intended that direct contact be in-person, email, or phone contact with the person in question, not his/her office or representative.

Research scientist/engineer position questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed to provide users a tool to quickly and easily document a position’s level of responsibility for a variety of competencies common to many research scientist and research engineer positions. Additionally, the questionnaire helps to readily identify and define those elements of a job that are most important in determining the position’s grade and title assignment.

The generic job descriptions provide a model for the typical attributes found in positions within the grade/job profile. They are based on similar job descriptions and career progression matrices used in other research-oriented organizations and have been adapted to reflect how the University differentiates between levels/grades.

The Career Path Guidelines identify the core competencies for various job content factors. Employing officials can use this tool to quickly identify an appropriate job level for a particular position. Employees can identify the level of competence required to progress from one level to the next. A position is generally assigned to a compensation grade that represents the majority of the position’s competencies. A position does not have to perform all competencies at a specific grade level to be assigned to that grade.

In-grade salary adjustments

Factors to consider when determining an appropriate salary adjustment include:

  • the individual’s performance,
  • length of time in the position,
  • external pressing issues such as current market conditions,
  • major organization policies,
  • whether the salary adjustment will cause an inequity or compression with another employee’s salary, and
  • University of Washington professional staff compensation program practices.

In-grade salary adjustment requests may be requested by the employee’s manager, department, or major organization and require the same approval as full reviews per organizational policy (dean/vice president or school/college, medical center COO, or delegated designee).

There is no University policy that governs how often an in-grade salary adjustment can be requested for an employee. If in-grade review requests are frequent for a position, Compensation may recommend that a full position review be conducted. Major organizations may also have their own internal review guidelines.

Job profile changes

The job profile change option was created for situations when a position’s duties may have changed but the compensation grade and pay rate are appropriate. If you believe that both a salary and title change are appropriate, consider requesting a full professional staff position review.

While not required, it is helpful to include a current job description with the title change request.