PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
The Office of Human Resources engaged Mercer, an industry leading consulting firm, in August 2022. Mercer provided market best practices, analyzed compensation data from other universities as well as broader industry, and then conducted extensive data analyses.
Salary Structure*
The staff salary structure is based on competitive external market data, best practices in compensation program design, and Villanova’s specific needs. The structure is designed to provide a framework to ensure internal equity across the University while balancing the flexibility necessary to hire and promote the best talent with strong salary management guidance.
The full salary structure is created with progressive grades to include all types of work done at Villanova. The salary structure consists of 15 grades and determines the assigned pay range for all jobs in a particular grade. Benchmark jobs are placed into the salary structure by matching market medians to established grade midpoints. The full range of the grade is created by aligning the minimum above the 25th percentile of the market data and the maximum above the 75th percentile of the market data to accommodate the differences in pay that are seen in the market.
Non-benchmark jobs are assigned to a grade based on the following job level criteria:
- Scope and major responsibilities
- Complexity and impact
- Knowledge, skills, and competencies
- Education and experience
*Faculty, faculty appointed administrators, and unionized staff are not included in the salary structure. These roles have unique responsibilities and qualifications that differentiate them from typical staff and are addressed separately.
Pay Ranges
Each grade has an associated salary range. The salary range defines the lower and upper range of market competitive salaries. Each range has a minimum, midpoint, and maximum rate of pay.
The compensation program’s salary ranges are wide enough to accommodate a variety of experience, service to Villanova, and performance levels, and all staff can expect to be paid within the salary range associated with their job’s grade. Villanova University is initially targeting that all staff be paid within a competitive range of the market for benchmark jobs and the competitive range of the grade for non-benchmark jobs.
Market Data
The salary structure was initially developed using high quality and regularly updated survey market data. Data from the 2022-2023 College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (“CUPA-HR”) Salary Survey and 2022 EduComp Compensation Survey were combined with that from the 2023 Mercer Benchmark Database (“MBD”) to include market data from both higher education institutions as well as general industry employers, where applicable. This recognizes that Villanova must compete across a broader competitive landscape for certain roles. These surveys:
- Focus on local and national data dependent upon the markets in which we compete for positions.
- Include peer institutions selected based on enrollment size, region, career level, Carnegie classification, etc. and general industry data consisting of 3,000+ participating organizations.
Market data is collected for “benchmark” jobs. A benchmark job is one where there are similar roles in the survey data that match. Since the bulk of work that we do in all jobs at Villanova varies, not every duty of the work performed in a job at Villanova is exactly the same in the market. A typical benchmark job assumes that 80% or more of the Villanova job duties are similar. We rely on job content to gather data for benchmark jobs as titles in the market are not always the same as the titles at Villanova.
We collect market data on the benchmark from multiple sources, when possible, to get the most robust understanding of how that job is paid in the market. We also know that pay varies, and so the data is collected as an expected range of pay.