All churches give their Pastor and Staff raises as appropriate and when finances allow.
Hopefully.
But how and under what guidelines or philosophy?
The system I recommend:
Give a Cost of Living (COL) raise if expectations were met. (As to Attitude, Teachability, Performance, Volunteer Recruitment, Growth in Knowledge/Skill – as an example). I mean, set high expectations in key areas as the base line.
If expectations were not met in your key areas, then perhaps something less than the COL is warranted.
If expectations were exceeded, award a Merit Raise – something over the COL rate.
This system is simple and straightforward.
Given the approach I just described, at the end of this post, I offer a practical, downloadable resource for you to use at your church.
Before you jump to the end though, it doesn’t matter the philosophy you employ, it pays to make informed decisions and to have a method that documents the compensation and raise.
The Template Components:
Employee Info – name, title
Employee Class – ministerial or not.
Hire Info – Hire date, salary, years of service
Withholding Info – Data for Social Security and other voluntary withholdings.
Proposed Salary Data – Section for the new proposed salary, increase amount & % along with effective date
Market Data – Salary amounts based upon churches of same size (budget, attendance & other criteria as deemed appropriate).
Raise History – Amounts and % of the previous 3 raises
COL Data – Historical COL for prior 3 years
Salary Allocation – this is where everything comes together
I’ve included an area for notes and the template ends with an approval section.
The person(s) recommending and approving the raise will have all the pertinent info to make a well informed decision (outside of the performance assessment). The proposals are approved by the Pastor and ultimately signed off on by the Chair person of the appropriate board or committee. Everyone’s signing off on everything in each section, not just the salary amount.
Ultimately, the executed form is routed to payroll to adjust payroll and benefits as needed. By the way, use this form at initial hire as well.
/Download the Excel Template/
Most items in the template are self explanatory, but note the following:
/Input cells are highlighted.
/Selected input cells have a note containing instructions when click inside the cell.
/The doc will print in black and white so the highlighted input cells are not seen.
Click [download id=”1189″] to download
What have you seen?
Scroll down and leave me a comment.