by Dan Harms, Chapter Vice President for Academics –
The Cortland refrain on our Discretionary Salary Increase money (DSI) process is that it rewards “merit.” Does it?
To start out, let’s say that the campus should be recognized for allowing employees to have a voice in the process of deciding how contractual DSI money is handed out, both in the application phase and giving them an appeals process. This is not something they’re required to do.
But is it about merit?
We’ve just received the data from the DSI allocation from the last round which ended in December. It begs for interpretation from someone who has actual knowledge of statistics, but what I can see troubles me.
Based on my interpretation of the data, the campus gave money to over three hundred DSI recipients – yet only about sixteen of those were part-time employees. Even with some caution as to these numbers, I can nonetheless ask the administration:
- Did less than twenty part-time employees on this campus merit a salary increase for their work?
Some might say, “We can’t give money to people who don’t apply.” First, be aware that the campus chooses not to report the number of applicants, just the number of awards, so it’s not clear whether part timers are applying or not. Second – if part-time employees aren’t applying, isn’t this an indication of a problem with the process? Third, we have used other processes in the past. Fourth – see below.
Remember, the total of all full-time and part-time salaries determines the amount of money the campus receives for DSI. We should avoid the process becoming one in which one group of faculty receives the overwhelming number of awards.
Second, we should talk about Information Resources, my own unit, which has many people doing hard, highly-skilled work crucial to the campus’ success. In addition, while the administration has made some effort to deal with salary compression in other units, IR has not been one of them. Thus, IR has many people eager for some reward for their efforts after many years, and many employees applied for DSI this round.
The first level of application review in IR went smoothly. When it reached the second level, however, management chose to avoid making any recommendations – something that the college has never done, to my knowledge. They left that call up to the third level – after the appeals process had ended. There, the decision was made to slash the ratings of many of the applicants, sometimes dropping them two tiers. Speaking for myself, my recommendation dropped from “Highly Recommended” to “Not Recommended,” and from talking with my colleagues, many others were equally dismayed with the results. The campus did grant another appeal period – for those who felt comfortable enough to write Erik – but the damage was done. Many people who had expected something for their efforts were deeply disappointed. Further, not a single part-time applicant from IR – and we did have them – received any DSI.
It’s true that the campus has only so much money to go around, but it does decide on how it allocates it in the process and the amounts of the awards at each tier. Thus, my second question:
2. How much should a “merit-based” rating of our performance depend on how many people in the unit also apply?
At this time, the next DSI process memos have already been mailed out. We’ll see how this round goes – but I’ve seen no indication anything will change in this next round.
