Staff Compensation

Staff Compensation Philosophy

The primary objective of the NU Values Compensation plan is to support and reinforce the organization's mission and values by providing a competitive and equitable pay and benefits package; a means of selecting and retaining a highly qualified and talented workforce and opportunity for that workforce to experience growth and advancement in a rewarding work environment.

Human Resources and Unit Leader Partnership

University department/unit leaders have the authority and responsibility to make sound decisions regarding staff compensation. NU Values supports these leaders by providing a partnership of information/knowledge exchange with the Department of Human Resources. HR staff provide tools and consultation so that leaders may reach informed compensation decisions.

Market Relevant Pay Ranges

The University of Nebraska has established market relevant salary ranges, or bands, based on current market salary data for each of the 15 job families. Salary data is obtained from established and reputable local, regional, and national survey sources, and is evaluated and updated on an ongoing basis to keep pace with the continuously changing job market. This enables the University to adjust the pay band for an individual family due to changes in the market independently of the market activity of positions in the other families. Human Resources is responsible for monitoring market conditions by identifying and comparing benchmarked jobs (NU jobs that can be matched to jobs found in salary surveys) to data published in salary surveys.

Each job family salary band is broken into four zones, which represent recognizable and measurable differences in levels of responsibilities, knowledge, skills and abilities within the specific job family. Each zone of each job family has a unique, market-relevant range of pay (minimum to maximum) that serves as the pay structure for the jobs assigned to it. The pay ranges associated with these zones are sufficiently broad to accommodate pay increases for high performing employees and individual job growth within a position without requiring continuous movement between zones.

Contact Human Resources for salary range data.

zone matrix