PORTLAND, Ore. — Compensation is a hot topic right now at OHSU.
The university is undergoing an effort, spearheaded by Chief People Officer Qiana Williams, to “fine tune and develop a compensation philosophy and practice that’s equitable and aligns with the market,” she said during a recent town hall for managers.
Those changes have given rise to a “range of emotions,” she said.
“It’s made a lot of people feel good that they’ve finally been fairly recognized for the work they’re doing,” Williams said during the town hall. “And for some, it has engendered emotions that they’ve been left behind and not honored for the work they're doing.”
That wider effort is not all that's happening around compensation.
OHSU President Dr. Danny Jacobs' plans to hand out bonuses to top managers, which has raised questions among some faculty and union leaders saying the money could be better spent elsewhere. A total of 2,000 of OHSU's 20,000 employees are slated to receive Presidential Recognition Awards, totaling $12.5 million. That includes OHSU’s eight executive vice presidents, among the university's top-paid employees, who are in line to receive bonuses of 15.9% of their salaries, which exceed $500,000 a year.
Compensation also played a big role in the recent contract agreement between OHSU and the Oregon Nurses Association. And earlier this year, lab directors balked at a directive to raise the salaries of their employees without any extra funding beyond their fixed grant budgets.
Against that backdrop, the Business Journal requested, and received, a list of the top-20 paid OHSU employees to get a window into the pay levels at the highest rungs of the university’s leadership.
The Business Journal, a news partner of KGW, has the full top 20 list here.
