Professional, Management, and Administration Compensation Study Results

Professional, Management, and Administration Compensation Philosophy

GRCC’s compensation philosophy is grounded in our desire to provide equitable and competitive compensation. GRCC strives to continuously develop talent to serve the college and the greater Grand Rapids community. GRCC’s aim is to foster a supportive and rewarding work environment that attracts, retains and empowers a diverse and high-performing team dedicated to the success of our students and the communities we serve.

Core Principles 

Transparency and access: Provide employees with access to salary ranges and ensure compensation policies are clear to all members of GRCC’s campus community.

Equitable: Seek to compensate employees in the same or similar jobs fairly and consistently relative to one another across the institution. Review positions to ensure equity within and across job levels/salary ranges within a defined job architecture. 

Total Rewards: Invest in the growth and development of GRCC employees. Through competitive compensation packages, comprehensive benefits and opportunities for professional development, the college supports continuous learning and career advancement.

Strategic: Manage compensation within a competitive structure that is aligned with market benchmarks. Recognize performance and pay competitive market rates, while being good stewards of the college’s budget. Develop flexible ranges of pay that have target market points, with a minimum and maximum value for each job. This ensures that GRCC employees are fairly rewarded for their skills, experience and contributions within the higher education landscape.

Talent Management: Recognizing and rewarding exceptional performance. Our compensation structure includes mechanisms for performance-based incentives to motivate and reward the achievements of GRCC employees.

Appeal Process for Compensation Classification

The purpose of the appeal process is to provide employees with a fair and transparent mechanism to request a review of their compensation classification. The process ensures that all appeals are thoroughly evaluated and approved at various levels of leadership, including the employee's supervisor, an executive leadership team member and the president.  

To start the appeal process please complete the appeal form no later than Friday, Oct. 4, 2024.

Salary Structure and Pay Ranges

Below, you will see that we have established three distinct salary structures. Unlike our current grade system, this new approach groups similar job families into three categories. Our consultant determined that this method best aligns market rates with the respective job families. The three salary structures are:

• Academic
• Operations
• Technical

Each category includes three career tracks: 

• The Professional Track
• The Management Track
• The Senior Leadership Track 

There is overlap in grades between the Professional and Management tracks, enabling career progression without necessarily moving into supervisory or managerial roles.

This new structure significantly increases the number of grades within our Meet & Confer group, allowing for better differentiation between positions.

Academic

Job family:

• Academic Affairs
• Athletics
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
• Enrollment
• Financial Aid
• Student Affairs

Operations

Job family: 

• Advancement
• Business Services
• Executive Support
• Facilities
• Finance
• Human Resources
• Legal and Compliance
• Marketing and Communications
• Public Safety

Technical

Job family:

• Information Technology