Last month, I began the discussion about compensation by encouraging you to have a compensation strategy. As a quick reminder for you, the three main strategies that I see are… compensation studies, partnering churches, and percentage-based compensation. You can learn more about all three of these strategies HERE, where I also explain why percentage-based compensation is my preferred compensation strategy.
This month, I want to encourage you to think about how you intentionally move someone from the bottom of their salary range to the top of their salary range. Unfortunately, at most churches, there isn’t a strategy to do this. Rather, when someone is hired, many times they get stuck in their salary range and only receive very modest cost of living increases (or no increase at all). This ultimately means that the purchasing power of the individual never really increases, which in the long run can cause the staff member to feel as if their hard work is not valued.
To fix this issue, your church needs to have a plan. To be clear, if you value longevity on your staff, you need to have an intentional strategy to help your team increase their salary. As I mentioned last month, we use a percentage-based compensation strategy at our church, and ultimately, faithfulness and longevity is financially rewarded. With that being said, here is our plan:
When someone is hired at our church, they typically start at the bottom of their salary range. Our goal is to bring them to the top of their salary range over a ten year period of time. For example, if an Associate Pastor makes between 60%-80% of our Lead Pastor, then to move that person from the bottom of their salary range to the top of their salary range would require that we give them a cost of living increase plus 2% each year. After ten years of doing this, we will successfully move this person from the bottom of their range to the top (again, we reward faithfulness and longevity at our church).
Your church might not use a percentage-based compensation strategy, and your church might not reward faithfulness and longevity. If that’s the case, that’s fine. However, you still have the same issue to think about, but you have the added responsibility of determining the person’s salary range, and then figuring out a plan to help that person move up.
Regardless of your situation, you need to have a plan. Without a plan, you are eventually going to end up with employees who feel under-valued and and under-appreciated. However, with a plan in place, you can have confidence that you are properly taking care of your team. So, let me encourage you to be intentional with your compensation strategy, and have a plan in place to reward your team!
For more information about how to lead your team effectively, please visit XPMinistry.com.
