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Fiscal Year 2025 Compensation & Salary Request Guidance

  

 

 Beginning Fiscal Year 2025, UGA will institute a one-year plan where compensation and salary adjustments related to retention or acute compression of any amount/percentage will require approval from the university President. These requests should be rare and will only be approved by the President under permissible, extraordinary circumstances as outlined in the criteria below. Please note that only a handful of such requests for the entire University will be approved by the President during FY25. Any requests subject to the Advanced Salary Increase request (ASI) criteria (PDF)and review by the University System of Georgia (USG) remain in place.

Criteria for Requests Requiring President’s Approval 

Allowable salary requests: 
  • Retention adjustments 
  • Acute Compression adjustments 
Requirements: 
  • Must include a justification indicating that the employee meets the following criteria:
    • The employee was identified to receive an FY25 merit. An individual who did not receive a merit-based adjustment may only be considered if extraordinary circumstances led to them not being selected.
    • The employee possesses critical expertise or knowledge based on having rare skills or specialized knowledge that impact research or student success.
    • The employee is critical to organizational success based on rare skills or specialized knowledge or expertise.
    • The employee maintains the highest level of productivity, performance, and outstanding service to the university.
    • Loss of the employee would result in a significant loss of external revenue or measurable and significant impact with respect to student instruction, research, and/or public service and outreach.
  • Retention Adjustments: 
    • Must have external evidence or an external offer that supports the request.
  • Acute Compression Adjustments:
    • Substantiative compression may be addressed with retention so long as the compression is not brought on by a newly hired employee.  
 Impermissible salary requests: 
  • Employees who received a retention, market, or equity adjustment in the past year 
  • “Pre-emptive” retention requests 
  • Market adjustments 
  • Equity adjustments
  • Compression adjustments resulting from hiring a new employee at an elevated rate of pay relative to existing employees.
  • Retroactive requests are not permissible and may only be acceptable when an administrative error occurs. University Human Resources (UHR) and the Office of Academic Fiscal Affairs (AFA) will review all requests to determine the appropriateness of any retroactive salary adjustments. TOP

Unit Responsibilities 

Dean/Vice President Responsibilities: 
  • Setting expectations within your organization regarding what can and cannot be submitted. 
All proposals must be approved by the Dean/VP prior to submission to UHR/AFA and the justification must meet the rare and extraordinary circumstances outlined above prior to submission to UHR/AFA. 
  • Approval of final recommended salary prior to UHR/AFA and presidential review and approval. 
  • Units are responsible for conducting strategic reviews to determine whether a request meets the criteria for rare and extraordinary circumstances. If a request does not meet these criteria, the request should not be submitted. 
  • If an employee has received other retention, market, equity, and/or compression requests in the past year due to changes in their job duties, units should consider the appropriateness of the request. Submitting multiple requests for the same employee or group of employees within a short time period (e.g., during the same year) should be rare. 
  • Units should complete the Request for Salary Action (RSA). The RSA justification should explain how the request meets the rare and extraordinary requirements and why an additional adjustment is necessary (if applicable). 
  • Salary details should only be communicated to the employee after all required approvals are obtained. 
  • Salary requests that create additional salary-related concerns will not be considered. 
What should be included with the request? 
  • All applicable supporting documentation (i.e.: performance reviews, productivity reports, budgetary impact reports, evidence of outstanding service, unit salary comparisons, etc.) 
  • Retention requests only – evidence of the external offer must be submitted to UHR/AFA. Requests should be submitted within 7 days of the external offer. 
  • All request proposals must be approved by the Dean/VP prior to submission to UHR/AFA.  TOP

Review Process 

Process overview: 
  • Faculty requests will be submitted to AFA for initial reviews. 
  • Staff requests will be submitted to UHR Compensation for initial reviews. UHR will review the documentation and confirm the exception request. 
    • Requests will be reviewed monthly with the President and Provost. 
  • Requests requiring USG approval will be routed after obtaining Presidential approval. 
  • Requests that do not require USG approval will be entered into OneUSG Connect once approved by the President. The signed RSAs will be returned to the unit. 
  • Units will be contacted after the decision meeting to inform them of the approval status. 
Timeline: 
  • Please allow up to 30 days for the full process (excluding USG approvals). 
  • Requests should be received by the 15th of the month prior to the proposed effective date.
    • I.e.: A request received on June 15th, with a 30-day approval and no USG approval required, would be entered for the next effective pay date in July. Note: This assumes the approval happened prior to the HR/Payroll deadline. 
  • Urgent retention requests may be submitted with a timeline that is shorter than the standard if the documented external offer requires a shorter response time. TOP

Other Related Salary Guidance 

Unit Restructures/Reorganizations: 
  • Reorganizations will be reviewed in full for appropriateness by UHR. 
  • All actions must be submitted prior to the start of the review. 
  • Newly created staff positions must be submitted for review through this process. Administrators should review the duties and assignments of existing employees before creating new positions to determine if a realignment or replacement of responsibilities is more appropriate. New staff positions will not be approved without documented analysis. 
  • Note: reorganizations may require additional review time and therefore may fall outside the 30-day turnaround referenced above. UHR will communicate with the unit if an extended review is required. TOP
 
 
Questions? Contact hrweb@uga.edu or (706) 542-2222