By Kristen Hackbarth and Bob Conrad

A handful of Washoe County employees yesterday blasted the implementation of the county’s salary changes. They say the changes made to salaries have caused some newer, less experienced employees to receive higher pay than those with more years of service.

Management consulting firm Korn Ferry was commissioned to make recommendations on how to adjust employee salaries, and many employees say the recommendations are insufficient and unfair.

Environmental health employees from Northern Nevada Public Health, which also adopted the Korn Ferry salary recommendations, said speaking to the Board of County Commissioners during public comment was a last resort to get their concerns heard.

“Over the last four months, many employees affected by Korn Ferry, including myself, have tried to reach out and express our concerns through the proper channels to try and have these inequities corrected,” said Mia Gzebb, an environmental health specialist at NNPH. “It is a last resort to come to the board … but we feel like we’ve run out of options.”

Gzebb and others said the problem was the compression of several pay grades into one. A new minimum was set for the newly created pay grade, and any employees within that grade making less than the new minimum received pay raises to meet the minimum pay. That affected trainees, many of whom have not completed training and certification. 

The trainees received pay increases that put them at level pay with others who’d not only completed training and certification but also had already received their annual 5% merit increases.

“I’m really tired of seeing people coming to work upset and crying because their pay and livelihood is being affected by this.”

The pay grade compression eliminated the value of those merit increases, more senior staff said. That goes counter to what county staff and Korn Ferry said were priorities for the salary adjustments. A staff report from the Feb. 14 presentation on the salary changes noted they would be implemented with an effort to “ensure internal equity and seniority considerations.”

To make matters worse, Gzebb said, those newer employees who received pay bumps and had anniversary dates after the new salary schedules went into effect then received their annual 5% merit increases. More senior employees, whose anniversary dates were before the August pay changes, have to wait another year to see their pay increase to the same level as these newer employees are currently paid. 

“I am now making less money than a coworker who was hired a year after me, whose hiring committee I sat on, and whose training I facilitated,” Olivia Alexander-Leader, another NNPH employee, said. She said she believes she should be given the pay that she earned, but the Korn Ferry pay adjustments negated that.

NNPH staff who provided comment said their appeals to management and human resources officials were unproductive. They alleged that not only could leadership not explain the pay inequities, but would also not explain why they refused to reconsider salaries.

“We were given answers such as, ‘We had to pick a date for the rollout, and there was no way to avoid some people getting a better deal out of it,’” Gzebb said.  

Ian Check, who works with Gzebb and Alexander-Leader, said that over the next six years, employees hired after him, who benefited from fortuitous timing for the Korn Ferry rollout, will take home at least $15,000 more pay.

Washoe County Manager Eric Brown admitted there were problems, but he implied they were isolated to NNPH, and more specifically, to the compensation and promotion practices in place in the Environmental Health Services department. He said the county has made strides on the issue.

NNHD is not under Brown but is governed by the District Board of Health, which oversees District Health Officer Kevin Dick, the boss of NNHD.

‘Nothing’s changed’

Employee William Mantle, who has been a critic of the Korn Ferry study for more than a year, said Brown’s comments were inaccurate. He’s not an NHPH employee and said the same problem is county-wide.

He said he tried to get his salary adjusted and was told no.

“I went to the county to say, ‘Hey, I have six days more time with the county than this person in the same pay grade. Can I have parity with pay?’ And their answer was ‘no,’” he added.

He repeated that those commenting at the commission meeting yesterday tried to go through the process internally but only spoke up publicly after no results.

“No one has been able or willing to address this issue,” Mantle said. “They had to go to [county commissioners] as the last hope of any relief. If human resources tells you no … the matter is closed. There’s no other avenue for redress. There’s nothing that’s changed.”

Mike Touhey, a senior staff member in EHS who has worked at the county for eight years, said the affected staff are among the lowest paid at the county. He added that merit increases weren’t adjusted for higher-paid staff and questioned why they were for those working in lower pay grades. 

“A dollar or two an hour for a family living in this town right now at these wages is not a lot of money to ask,” Touhey said. “These people work really hard. I’m really tired of seeing people coming to work upset and crying because their pay and livelihood is being affected by this.”

He added that the department has 22 positions, and they’ve hired 25 people over the last three years due to turnover. He said retaining good staff should be a priority. 

Washoe County Commissioner Mike Clark said he wants the problems quickly fixed. 

“I’ve been talking about this Korn Ferry study since before I was sworn in,” Clark said. “We find out now that after the Korn Ferry study was implemented, there are a number of flaws. We need to have these employees—even if it’s on a case-by-case basis—meet with HR and figure out how we can be fair and equitable to all of our employees. This is an issue of treating the rank and file folks properly.”

Washoe County officials did not provide comment for this story by the time of publication.