Career Path Modernization Project

The CPM Project is a multi-year endeavor to transform our 40-year-old job description, job title, career path, and compensation program. Job titles and descriptions will be updated to accurately reflect the work being performed by our employees. The project will also establish a new pay grade structure that aligns salary ranges to the regional job market.

This project reflects our commitment to creating a supportive, equitable, and inclusive work environment where everyone can thrive and to making the University a model employer that attracts, engages, and motivates the best people.

We will be reviewing jobs that cover approximately 20,000 staff in about 1,000 job codes that include staff through the senior administrator and vice president levels. At this time, we will not be reviewing faculty positions, bargaining unit positions, student workers, Post Docs, Residents/Fellows, Department Fellows, IRS Key Employees or Executives.

Building the job structure requires that we identify a set of representative jobs from across the entire University. These jobs are called Phase I jobs and have core responsibilities and requirements that are found in other large, complex academic medical centers and employers. We are targeting approximately 500 jobs for this first phase of review. These are planned to be completed by June 2021. The remainder of the jobs within the scope of the project will be reviewed and updated with a target completion date of June 2022. Jobs in the department and/or division may be reviewed together.

Yes; all jobs in scope for the CPM project will be reviewed and updated as appropriate. If it’s determined that a position included in the grade 50-52 hourly transition meets the federal and state criteria for exemption and should be categorized as a salaried position in the new structure, it will be defined accordingly. Federal and state legislation regulates positions that must be paid hourly and the CPM project will comply with those standards.

Yes, the new structure will be flexible enough to grow with the University, including the Medical Center, for many years.

Given the number of jobs being reviewed during the three-year CPM project, the job review process will continue through June 2022. The HR and Compensation teams are currently working together with managers to assess, prioritize and update the job descriptions.

The University of Rochester is a large institution with unique jobs and operational needs. The project team will work to build a structure that balances categorizing like positions together with reflecting the complexities of our organization and special positions where appropriate. The consultant that we have hired to support the project, Mercer, will be able to provide expertise in finding that balance having worked with a number of similar organizations to implement a job structure.

Based on the size and scope of the project, the University has engaged Mercer, a global human resources consulting firm with expertise across industries including a specialization in health care and higher education, to assist the project team on a limited basis to provide insight into our institution’s needs related to compensation and total rewards. Mercer has expertise in compensation programs and career development and has worked with many other universities and academic medical centers on similar initiatives.

This page will be updated to provide information and keep the community up to date on progress over the course of the project.

The CPM project will involve new titling guidelines that will create consistencies across the institution and will result in updates to some job titles. This is important to accurately support transparency, create career paths and understand the positions and pay opportunities available at the University.

The new job structure will provide alignment internally to comparable jobs and externally to the market. The new job structure may use different numbers to indicate pay grades than today’s structure, so the number associated with a specific pay grade will change in some instances.

The new structure and pay grades will enable us to more accurately assess pay relative to our internal pay ranges and the external market. This will help guide future planning and decision making through the University’s standard budgetary processes. In some instances it may lead to pay increases. At this time, we do not expect employee pay to be reduced by the changes.

Managers may be asked to participate in job reviews by validating employees current job responsibilities. For positions that exist in multiple departments across the University, managers will also be collaborating with colleagues across the institution to arrive at one generic job description.

There may be times where the project team will ask for managers to seek input from their teams and they will need to respond timely to requests for information.