The RFP asks for a review of every employee's compensation against hire date, tenure in position, and placement within their range, with compression and inversion identified and priced. This page demonstrates the method on illustrative data. The delivered analysis runs on the Town's incumbent file, and the 2024 study already measured where Vienna stood.
On the structures adopted July 2024, the study reported an overall compa-ratio of 93.1%, with 39.7% of employees sitting below 90% of midpoint and a measurable tail above 110%. It also set the placement expectation the RFP now asks us to revisit: an employee with 10 to 12 years of job-specific experience should sit at or near midpoint, with hiring terciles at less than 7, 7 to 14, and more than 14 years of experience. Three years of 2 to 3% COLAs and 1% merit later, the question is not whether drift exists; it is where, how much, and what it costs to correct on a schedule the Town can afford.
For each of the roughly 202 employees: expected range position from tenure and creditable experience under the tercile guidance, versus actual position. The gap sorts everyone into aligned, compressed (behind expectation), or inverted (junior paid at or above senior in comparable work). Each flagged case carries its evidence, and the correction schedule is priced as immediate, two-year phased, and tenure-based step placement scenarios, exactly the implementation options §4.5.2 names. Police and civilian populations run through the same engine with their own structures, so the joint review respects the two-track design.
Structure redesign decides what jobs are worth. Placement review decides whether the people in them are paid consistently with that answer, and it is the part of the study every employee personally experiences. Our working papers name the rule applied to every case, so when a department head asks why one adjustment happened and another did not, HR answers from the record rather than from memory. The administrative manuals the RFP requires (§4.5.3) carry the same rules forward, so next year's hires are placed by policy, not by negotiation.