Keene State College
PA-12: Employee Compensation

C&W
Chartwells
Barnes and Noble

- Total compensation provided to the institution’s lowest paid, regular, part-time or full-time employee: $16.66
- A brief description of the minimum total compensation: The employee’s annual base rate with the institution’s fringe rate. This fringe rate is mostly comprised of health insurance, retirement contributions, statutory benefits, and tuition waivers. The benefits package includes a significant employer contribution to retirement (10% for a 6% employee contribution) and low bi-weekly medical premium deductions ($36.20 for one-person plan; $98.63 for two-person plan and $187.34 for a family plan.) The full benefits package includes access to dental insurance, long-term disability, paid time off, life insurance, and tuition benefits. All employees are also covered for Social Security contributions, unemployment, and workers compensation.

Keene State College is working towards this, and since most employees are now covered by Unions, this is part of the Union negotiations. Furthermore, as part of the University of New Hampshire System, KSC follows the philosophy and guidance of USNH.
Market Philosophy:
The University System of New Hampshire has a market philosophy that primarily centers upon two surveys that use standard, valid, proven methods of data collection. This philosophy is the same for all benefitted employees, including leadership. The two surveys utilized are CUPA-HR, a higher education-specific survey, and CompAnalyst, a survey for all industries. For each position being analyzed, we benchmark the position responsibilities to a generic job description in each of the surveys.

In CUPA-HR, we have two comparator groups. For each institution within the USNH (UNH, KSC, PSU, GSC), there is a peer group and a revenue group. The peer group is comprised of fifteen or so institutions that match the campus in at least two Carnegie classifications. The revenue group is comprised of all institutions participating in the survey who have a total revenue between one-half and two-times the revenue of the institution. Provided that at least five members of the comparator group report data for a specific job title, the group produces a median salary. If both comparator groups produce a median, we average the two medians together to produce our CUPA median. In CompAnalyst, we compare our hourly, non-exempt employees to all participants of the survey in New Hampshire, and our salaried, exempt employees to all participants of the survey in the Northeast. This produces our CompAnalyst median.

We average the CompAnalyst median and CUPA median together to get our Market Target. By taking plus or minus 15% of the Market Target, we identify the Market Low and Market High and create a Market Range. Our goal is that every employee fall within the Market Range, as the Market Range indicates that one’s salary is competitive.

Wage Schedules for status employees: https://www.usnh.edu/resource/wage-schedules

USNH Compensation Policy: https://www.usnh.edu/policy/usy/v-personnel-policies/f-compensation In particular, V.F.3.2.1 shows how we identify the pay grade for a classification based on the market median. V.F.7 covers all the additional pay options we have at our disposal that are not included in an employee’s base rate.

This information was developed through a conversation with Compensation Analyst, Brandon Edgerly. He provided the numeric information. A complete copy of his correspondence is presented in "Additional documentation to support the submission."
Information on contractors provided by:
Chartwells team:
• There are currently 63 total Chartwells associates here at KSC as of today.
• 26.9% are paid at/more than $16.44 per hour
• We do not have any associates covered by a collective bargaining agreement
(Information provided by Jennifer Ferrell, Associate Vice President of Student Engagement)
C&W team: 14 of 57 employees receive above the livable wage (or, 25%)
(Information provided by David Merritt, onsite manager for C&W)