In the later days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when inflation was ratcheting up all around the country, the manager of our food service team came to me with an urgent assessment. “I think we’re going to lose several of our employees if we can’t raise their wages,” he said.
Kent Denver School outsources food service to Sodexo, but our food service employees have been with the school for many years, and they do a great job, so we wanted to retain them. They love being at Kent Denver and feel like they are an integral part of the community. A few examples: on spirit day, they’re wearing Kent Denver garb; they go to games; and we recognize them in faculty and staff meetings.
The Sodexo employees were paid $17-$21 an hour at that time. Here in Denver, entry level food service workers, even in fast food, were getting $20 an hour for easier work. Everyone was feeling the costs of inflation, in food, housing, fuel, etc., and the school was locked into a food contract mid-year when this information hit. We knew we had to do something about this and fast.
We let our food service employees know how important having them stay at Kent Denver was to us, and so we would increase their hourly wages significantly.
We took a two-pronged approach. First, I renegotiated the contract with the vendor, with the stipulation that our increased payment to the vendor had to go towards employee wages, not any other area. That wage correction was significant in cost, but it allowed us to meet the real financial needs of the Sodexo employees. Second, we held a meeting with the employees, led by the food services manger, which I attended as well. We let our food service employees know how important having them stay at Kent Denver was to us, and so we would increase their hourly wages significantly. While this would add up to thousands of dollars more a year, we increased rates between $1.50-$3.00 an hour, much more than symbolic a 25- or 50-cent increase would have been.
Equally important, this showed how the school would go to bat for them. It let them know how valued they were. After that meeting, morale and appreciation was great. Every single one of those employees is still with us now. The renegotiation also made our administration, and our board and finance committee feel good too.
A Complete Compensation System
Ten years ago, Kent Denver did a major overhaul of our faculty compensation system, but we had not taken a corresponding look at staff employees until a couple years ago. After hiring Shannon Ryback, Kent Denver’s first HR director, we reevaluated how we compensated staff roles, which make up 40% of our employees. This system applied to our instructional support employees and other key administrative jobs that are neither senior leadership nor faculty.
The new system built in professional development and training opportunities as well as bonus structures and opportunities for advancement. The system, along with the faculty compensation system, is available on our website, and new hires in those positions can see what we do.
I think that making the system transparent and having a structure parallel to our faculty compensation system makes a difference in recruitment and retention. Sometimes it’s the wage piece that makes a difference, but other times, as with Sodexo, it is wages and also showing appreciation and support.
Number Crunching
Like most schools, we want to make sure that we’re allocating as much of our resources as we can towards the people of our school: the faculty, administration and staff. To make a compensation adjustment like we did, we needed to work intentionally with our board and finance committee in particular, modeling out what labor costs and labor inflation are doing, and how that translates into resource allocation.
We’ve seen some savings in other areas post-pandemic. They don’t completely offset inflation, whether that be in materials, consumables, fuel, etc., but we have been able to redirect some savings toward salaries. Frankly, since this wasn’t enough, we also had to go to our community. We explained how we’re facing inflation, and this was the reason that families were going to see larger than normal increases in tuition. Historically, we tried to keep our tuition increases very close to the rate of inflation, but for the last two years, we’ve increased tuition by 6.5% both years, year over year.
We had to do some educating of our community, but I think that was a little easier because everyone was experiencing inflation. So it wasn’t hard to sell or to understand, but it was still something that we had to go out and do. Perhaps the one silver lining of inflation was that it pushed us to deliver a better compensation structure for everyone at the school.
