General information

These guidelines include information regarding the four types of salary adjustments that occur outside of the annual merit process: 

IMPORTANT:

Additional Duty Pay

Two types are available:

  1. Temporary Additional Duties:  Used to accommodate a change in work content that is limited in timeframe. This type of increase is often used in cases of turnover that result in a staffing shortage and short-term projects or surges.

  2. Permanent Additional Duties:  Permanent increases may be justifiable when the work has changed in a position for the foreseeable future, but the change does not require a change in title (reclassification). This often happens because of a redistribution of work or an organizational change that increases the accountability of a specific position.

Additional duties may fall within or outside the current scope of the employee’s job description.

Important considerations for Additional Duty Pay

Before deciding to give additional duty pay, the manager should consider the following:

1) Ask yourself, is my employee working exceptionally long hours during the week and/or more intensely during the workday?  Is my employee performing job duties at the same or higher skill level than their current job duties?  If you answered yes to any question, then additional compensation could be warranted. 

2) Staff positions are either non-exempt (earn overtime) or are exempt (earn compensatory time).  [Ask your HR Partner for a list of employee types.]

3) If the job duties and workload continue to increase and/or shift dramatically beyond a reasonable time frame, the manager should consider permanent additional duties or a reclassification to more appropriately reflect the workload. 

4) For instances of turnover, consider cost savings to the unit by not filing the vacant position and instead redistributing job duties among remaining staff and re-prioritizing service levels, which may or may not include temporary or permanent additional duty pay.  Also, when turnover occurs within a unit, prior to issuing temporary duty pay to a manager/leader of a unit, one should consider that the job duties inherent in the manager/leader position include temporarily absorbing some work during times of organizational change.

5) Instead of issuing temporary additional duty pay, take a comprehensive look at all staff salaries within your unit and adjust salaries permanently, either during merit season or via an equity compensation change (see Equity section below).

6) Ask yourself, will issuing additional compensation set an expectation among your staff?

COE requirements for Additional Duty Pay

Calculating Additional Duty Pay amount

The amount of temporary additional duty pay should calculate as a percent of an employee’s base salary.

Important: Do not process anything in Workday or inform employees of additional compensation until all approvals have been obtained.

Process

Temporary Additional Duties and Permanent Additional Duties requests

1) Follow the instructions at COE Salary Adjustment Request form to submit the request.

2) The COE Salary Adjustment Request form will route according to cost center:

3) The unit will then process the salary adjustment in Workday.  HR Partners should:

Equity increases

Equity increases may be justified due to volatile swings in the internal or external markets for specific skills and competencies. These forces, which can be quantified and substantiated by survey data, often require expeditious action to ensure fairness and equity. These are often used as a retention strategy.

Process

Counteroffers

Process

Email COE-HR@austin.utexas.edu and include a copy of the offer letter.

For pre-emptive counteroffers, forward relevant documentation.

Resources

Salary Adjustments | Human Resources

Budget Office Review of Certain Salary Changes | Budget Office


Please send suggested additions to this page and notifications about broken links to COE-HR@austin.utexas.edu.