The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners received news at its Oct. 21 meeting that the county’s new compensation plan is moving forward on schedule. The plan is expected to be completed in tandem with the county’s current budget process.  

“We had good information to start with,” Human Resources Consultant Laurie Bouchard assured the commissioners.

Working under a contract with the county, Bouchard, of L. Bouchard & Associates, LLC, has been hired to provide assistance in updating Lincoln County’s employee compensation structure and job classifications.

Under the terms of the contract, a position classification system is being produced that will assign grades and salary ranges to county jobs. Lincoln County was able to use a format that had been previously been used by Knox County, and so saved some expense.

The first step in the process was, as Bouchard explained, to ask county employees to complete questionnaires that described their jobs. This effort produced a complete set of updated job descriptions for county employees.  

The job descriptions were evaluated and became the underpinning of a plan that placed positions within assigned levels. A committee composed of several senior members of county departments, along with the sheriff’s office and the county administrator, met to review the evaluations.

The next step in the process was to assign titles and grade levels to each job.

Adjustments were made as a result of the committee meetings. As County Administrator John O’Connell said, “We went through the job descriptions line by line.”

Moving into executive session at the meeting on Tuesday, the board reviewed specific jobs and compensation ranges assigned to these.

Summarizing the work to date, O’Connell advised the board, “Laurie’s done a very thorough job and kept to the timeframe we set in conjunction with the county’s budget process.”