The Oconto County Board has hired McGrath Human Resources Group to prepare a compensation and classification study for county employees, in an effort to being the county more in line with current market rates.
“Developing and maintaining a competitive classification and compensation plan in today’s fiscally conservative environment is extremely challenging, yet essential to attract, motivate, engage and retain a qualified workforce,” company CEO Victoria McGrath wrote in a cover letter in the Jamestown, Tennessee, firm’s proposal for the right to develop the plan.
Oconto County human resources director Shelly Schultz said McGrath was founded in Wisconsin and has worked with several counties in northeast Wisconsin.
The study would be funded through the county’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation and would cost up to $62,000.
“That’s the maximum it would be, depending on travel time and different things — a lot of it we can do virtual,” Schultz said.
The company aims to work hand-in-hand with committee, department heads and the county board to find a compensation structure that works for the county, she said.
“They’re not going to recommend something that doesn’t work for us,” Schultz said. “In the past, the last time we did a compensation plan, it was pre-COVID, which was a completely different compensation structure as it is now, and they never followed through.”
McGrath has a 99% follow-through rate with the county, meaning they implement the plan and continue to work with the county over the years, including annual updates and analytics, she said.
That hasn’t always been the case with past compensation plans, Schultz added.
“What’s been happening is the people who get raises or where they go on the wage scale depends on who squawks the loudest,” she said. “You see it (at the county board) all the time — ‘We can’t get a maintenance guy, can we bring (the position) to Maintenance II, can we do this,” so this is supposed to prevent that, where we look at the overall compensation structure, as well as our benefits.”
The county board unanimously approved the agreement with McGrath.
wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com
