Setting and maintaining effective compensation levels is a priority in any workplace. Legislatures are no different. A 2022-23 NCSL survey of 1,450 legislative staff found that 66% of respondents said compensation was very important to them with respect to employee retention. What’s more, competitive staff salaries and benefits ranked 3.7 out of 4 on what makes for an effective legislative workplace.
One strong tool that legislative employers can use to set and maintain pay is a formal compensation and classification plan. A plan delineates pay ranges for jobs similar to those found in other fields, including government employers and the private sector. Compensation and classification plans help employers make basic management decisions about pay, recruitment, advancement, performance evaluation and training. They also help clarify employee goals and expectations, giving staff a sense of how to advance through the organization via career ladders.
There are different methods used to design and implement a formal classification and compensation plan. However, best practice suggests a focus on issues of internal equity between jobs, a consistent structure for the plan, and competitiveness with the external job market.
A 2017 NCSL survey of legislative HR professionals found that many legislative offices—60% of the respondents—use a formal classification and compensation plan for legislative employees. Other legislatures have created pay plans in subsequent years. NCSL has played a role in some efforts, assisting legislatures with the detailed work required to develop effective pay structures.
Legislatures contact NCSL regularly to ask for data about what other legislatures pay their staff. Often, their intent is to ensure their compensation levels are appropriate and competitive.
Unfortunately, salary survey data from other legislatures often are not as relevant as other data for this kind of analysis. In fact, NCSL discontinued collecting 50-state staff salary data many years ago because: 1) without a great deal of study and analysis, it is extremely difficult to know if a job title in one state has duties, responsibilities and minimum qualifications equivalent to the same title in another legislature, and 2) capital city job markets vary significantly by state. For example, the job market for attorneys may look different in Austin compared to Annapolis, Atlanta or Augusta.
This is not to say that legislatures don’t successfully recruit staff talent from other legislatures. Some legislatures advertise open positions on NCSL’s Jobs Clearinghouse in the hopes of attracting applicants from across the country. Anecdotally, NCSL knows that some cross-legislative movement happens, although an employee’s reasons for taking a job in another legislature do not always solely relate to pay.
Still, NCSL encourages state legislatures to minimize the value of interstate legislative salary data as a comparative benchmark for most positions. Instead, legislative employers should focus more on salary data collected in relevant job markets. These relevant markets may be different for different kinds of legislative jobs, but for most state legislatures, local salary data is best. This often means looking closely at pay rates for state and local government jobs in and near your capital city. Private sector jobs in the local market with comparable scope, authority and oversight may also provide useful comparative data.
In their book, "Compensation," authors George Milkovich and Jerry Newman provide the following guidance for identifying good sources of comparative salary data: “The three factors usually used to determine the relevant labor markets are the occupation (skill/knowledge required), geography (willingness to relocate, commute, or become virtual employees), and competitors (other employers in the same product/service and labor markets).”
Geography is a dominant factor when analyzing most legislative labor markets. The most significant employment competitor for most state legislatures is the executive branch of government in the same state. The “occupation” factor also is important for selecting relevant comparable data. For example, clerical positions probably can be compared to clerical roles in many different kinds of organizations in the same geographic area. And information technology talent is sought by a diverse range of employers. For these jobs, it’s sometimes useful (but potentially expensive) to go to third-party sources of salary data such as the Economic Research Institute or Salary.com, both of which offer city-specific salary benchmarks for common job titles. On the other hand, jobs like chief of staff, bill drafting attorney or policy analyst are more specialized to government and sometimes to certain kinds of nonprofits, universities or public affairs organizations. In these cases, it is helpful to perform additional original salary survey work to find relevant comparable data.
Analysis shouldn’t stop after an initial market check. The market for talent changes over time and employers must monitor those changes. There is no fixed answer about how often market checks should be conducted. As with all things in human resource management, the need is based on the situation. However, best practice in compensation management suggests that market checks, especially for key job roles or for important specializations, should be conducted every few years, on average.
Setting legislative pay levels is complicated, and this brief merely discusses establishing “external” equity with the job market. As mentioned, a best practice is that a plan also addresses “internal” equity—offering equal pay for equal job value within the workplace. In addition, legislatures should consider the total compensation offered to employees. Strong benefit packages for legislative employees could offset the ability or need to match market salary levels.
Employers are using remote work or flexible schedules as recruitment and retention tools. If legislatures choose to adopt this approach, they should continuously monitor and evaluate the flexible work landscape in their local job market, particularly among primary competitors, including the executive branch. These competitors may offer different levels of flexibility than legislatures, affecting legislative employers’ competitive posture in the market. Legislatures could choose to adjust their philosophy on pay or other benefits as a result.
Regardless of the total compensation offered, legislative employment offers a range of powerful intrinsic rewards—think organizational mission and the opportunity to work with smart, talented, dedicated colleagues and managers. That may substitute, at some level, for the incentive to make more money.