In 2022, 性视界传媒 partnered with an independent consultant to conduct a classification and compensation study for most administrative faculty positions. Originally titled Rebel Future to reflect the university鈥檚 commitment to investing in its employees, the study examined how 性视界传媒 creates, defines, and associates jobs that perform similar or related work. Through the study, jobs were categorized by subfamilies built on clear job descriptions and designed to support career progression and growth. The study also examined how positions are compensated in relation to one another and to comparable positions in external labor markets.

The study鈥檚 outcomes are reflected in the new Rebel Job Framework.

Information sessions for employees and managers / supervisors are available to support implementation. Additional information is available below under the Change Management Planning/Campus Socialization/Implementation section.

The project creates new structures and processes for setting and adjusting salaries. No 鈥渁utomatic鈥 salary increases will be made.

Additionally, a 30-day appeals process will be available from July 1 鈥 July 31, 2026. During this period, directors and above may request an appeal of an employee鈥檚 assigned career stream, career level, and/or Rebel Title by completing an appeal form. Departments may request access to the form by contacting their compensation analyst or senior HR business partner. Appeals will be reviewed and processed within 60 days from the date of receipt.

Study Timeline

Rebel Future will take place in the following phases:

This phase included finalizing the project scope, objectives, stakeholder involvement, deliverables, and timeline.

This phase included analyzing current classification data and documentation and conducting interviews to understand the context of the current structure and the work that has been completed to date.

Huron Consulting held three focus groups with 32 stakeholders to gain broad perspectives on current opportunities, challenges, and strengths of staff compensation administration, practices, and processes. 

Key Themes from Phase 2 Focus Groups
  • Employment landscape is changing
    • Benefits including retirement and time off are top factors for attraction and retention but may not be as strong as they have been in the past.
    • Other top attraction and retention factors include:
      • Work environment
      • Las Vegas location
      • Sense of mission
    • Hospitality, local/area companies, and other universities are seen as the top competitors for talent.
    • Internal 性视界传媒 positions are also seen as competition. 鈥淲e compete against ourselves.鈥
    • In addition to geographical competition for talent, participants spoke to competition from remote work opportunities, specifically for IT positions.
  • Compression and equity are perpetual changes
    • Compression was shared as the strongest challenge to navigate, affecting how leaders evaluate pay for candidates. Many suggested they are bringing in less qualified talent or lowering qualifications of the job to meet budget constraints.
    • Participants spoke to the limitations of budget to address market competitiveness, leaving equity often the priority.
    • Equity is not clearly defined.
    • Titles are used inconsistently across campus, which makes internal equity across colleges/units challenging to navigate.
  • Pay as an incentive and motivation has limits
    • Compensation is not structured in a way to motivate employees once they are here.
    • Employees are primarily looking for pay increases when seeking advancement.
    • Internal job hopping occurs to achieve increases in pay.
  • Current processes and practices do not promote consistency or flexibility
    • Desire for consistency in foundational practices and the need for flexibility that makes us competitive in attracting and retaining employees.
    • Depends on the work 鈥 some positions (administrative faculty or hard-to-fill roles) may need more flexibility than others.

This phase includes drafting standardized job descriptions to be reviewed with functional subject matter experts and stakeholders; developing career ladders and mapping positions to appropriate job descriptions; and proposing business titling standards and conventions.

Standardized Job Descriptions

In March and April , approximately 145 subject matter experts (SMEs) composed of managers and staff reviewed and provided feedback on approximately 75 性视界传媒 job subfamilies and over 500 standardized job descriptions. Organizational and functional leaders reviewed and approved these job descriptions.

Identifying a need for further job description development, the team has created an additional 100+ job descriptions to ensure the job framework incorporates a comprehensive list of career streams and levels.

Mapping

The team aligned each position in scope for the Rebel Future project to a career stream, rebel title, and level.

The team has also aligned vacant positions under recruitment to a career stream, rebel title, and level.

Job Description Library

All employees and managers will have access to an online job description library where they can review position responsibilities, minimum qualifications, and career progression expectations across both the Professional and Manager career streams, including associated career levels. This centralized platform will help improve transparency, consistency, and accessibility of job information across the university.

As Rebel Future progresses, our current priority is implementing the new job classification framework to establish a consistent foundation for career architecture and position alignment across the university.

Compensation structure development remains an important future phase of the initiative. In preparation, we will continue evaluating labor market data from comparable public institutions to help inform a fair, competitive, and sustainable compensation strategy.

This phase includes creating a roadmap for communicating the new classification and compensation models, training design, development and delivery to managers, on a timeline that is coordinated with other aspects of the study, and a strategy for implementation. It also includes a strategy for implementation.

We anticipate concluding the Rebel Future Project and implementing the new rebel framework by July 1, 2026. Below is the rollout schedule:

  • May 2026 - Finalize employee mapping and job description development
  • June/July 2026 - Information sessions for the following audiences:
    • Administrative Faculty Employees. These virtual sessions will explain the purpose of the new job classification structure and its core components, providing employees with an understanding of how positions were classified and mapped within the framework. Sessions are open to any employee interested in learning about the new Rebel Job Framework
    • Supervisors and Managers of Administrative Faculty: This virtual training equips managers and supervisors with the knowledge and tools needed to support their teams under the Rebel Job Framework. The sessions will outline the purpose and benefits of the new job classification structure, highlighting framework components such as the differences between job descriptions and position descriptions, career streams/levels, and work dimensions. Managers and supervisors will learn how classification requests are submitted and reviewed, their responsibilities within the process, and the resources available to assist them. The training emphasizes consistency, transparency, and fairness in managing position classification across campus.
  • July 1, 2026 - Rollout/Implementation
  • July 1, 2026 - July 31, 2026 - Appeals Submission Period

Informational Sessions

Purpose

Rebel Future is a building block to one of our Top Tier 2.0 strategic objectives, in creating opportunities for career progression. 性视界传媒 seeks to be a model employer so we can attract and retain the best talent. Part of this includes having the right approach to defining jobs and managing compensation. Our current practices are complicated, hard to navigate, difficult to update, and do not create clear pathways for advancement for administrative faculty employees. As a result, like many other universities, we are undertaking this study to develop a new, more modern approach.

Compensation practices have developed organically, and our approach no longer aligns to benchmark best-in-class practices.  One example of this is that we have approximately 1,500 administrative faculty positions, many of which have very specific titles and PDQs for each and every job.  This makes it very difficult to compare roles across the university and to our competitors.

Goals

A new job classification and compensation system will help the university achieve four goals:

  1. Attract and retain qualified employees
  2. Provide fair salary and stipend structures.
  3. Provide clearer paths for career growth and advancement.
  4. Modernize approaches to procedures and guidelines that enable the university to operate more effectively and efficiently.

Impacted Positions - Revised

The study will review and update most administrative faculty positions.

This study will not impact:

  • Executives (deans, vice presidents)
  • Postdoctoral scholars
  • Academic faculty
  • Classified staff
  • Head coaches
  • Temporary employees (letters of appointment, dental and medical residents, temporary hourly, graduate assistants, and student workers)
  • Given the highly performing nature of positions at assistant, associate vice president or vice provost levels, a comprehensive job framework and compensation model will be established for employees in these roles. They will be implemented at a later date.

Scope

Rebel Future will examine how the university:

  • Defines and groups administrative faculty positions

  • Assigns business titles in a more consistent manner

  • Determines the appropriate salary or salary range

  • The study draws upon internal information, such as our current position description questionnaires (PDQs) and salary structure, and external information such as salary data and approaches taken by other universities.

The study will produce recommendations for new standardized job descriptions, business titles, salary ranges, compensation strategies, and administration policies and procedures.

Job Classification Framework鈥

Job framework is a series of progressively higher related jobs distinguished by levels of knowledge, skills, abilities (competencies), and other factors. It includes four key components that are tied to each job through a job description, a high-level definition of a job鈥檚 purpose, responsibilities, and qualifications.

  • A job designation for a specific category of work and FLSA exemption.
  • Example: Academic faculty, administrative faculty, classified staff, etc., contained within the NSHE Workday system.

  • A broad category of work, parent of 性视界传媒鈥檚 job subfamily, that can be logically grouped together by function.
  • Example: Academic Affairs, Business Operations, Student Affairs, Healthcare Professional, etc., contained within the NSHE Workday system.

  • A job family is a group of jobs that involve similar work and require similar training, skills, knowledge, and expertise. A subfamily is a smaller group of jobs within a larger job family
  • Job family groups and job families are determined by NSHE and subfamilies are unique to 性视界传媒.
  • Each job is a part of a subfamily that includes the specialized categories for 性视界传媒 (e.g., IT-Security, 鈥婬R-Benefits, etc.).
  • Important Note: 性视界传媒 job subfamilies are organized by the type of work, not where positions sit in the organization.

  • A progression of job levels attributed to the fundamental nature of work being performed, providing consistency across job 性视界传媒 job subfamilies. 
    • Example 1: Professional contributor
      • Designs, implements, guides, and/or delivers processes, programs, and/or policies using specialized knowledge or skills 鈥嬧
      • Typically requires attainment of advanced education (bachelor鈥檚 degree) and/or equivalent advanced learning through experience鈥
    • Example 2: Manager
      • Oversees broad portfolios of responsibility; plan, prioritize, and/or direct responsibilities of employees; and/or manage strategy and policy development for a function, department, or unit鈥嬧
      • Typically requires attainment of advanced education (bachelor鈥檚 degree) and/or equivalent advanced learning through experience鈥嬧
      • Positions in the category typically have multiple direct reports鈥

  • A categorization of the scope, authority, and responsibility required for a job, differentiated by work dimensions

  • Detail on a job鈥檚 complexity, nature of work, scope, degree of responsibility, etc.

Stipend Guidelines

Rebel Future will review our current stipend practices and make recommendations for a formalized structure for administrative faculty. Currently, stipends are reviewed on a case by case basis which is not  an efficient practice. Establishing a stipend structure will provide a seamless review and approval process. Future stipend structure implementation will not impact any stipends employees are currently receiving. 

Market Level Comparisons

Rebel Future will define the university鈥檚 market strategy and peer groups. This information will help leadership formulate a compensation philosophy that strives to be competitive and inform how we manage compensation over the long term.

Salary Compression

Salary compression occurs when a new hire earns close to or more than an employee with more responsibility or a longer period of service earns. Individual instances of compression, though, are not part of the study and are addressed through HR and unit leaders on campus when they arise.

Governance

An advisory group will provide input on the process and recommendations. As specific recommendations are developed, campus subject matter experts and governance groups will be invited to provide input.

The advisory group committee members include:

  • Alexandra Nikolich, chief of staff for Business Affairs
  • Deb Powell, executive director for Academic Resources
  • Erin Messer, associate vice president for Academic Resources
  • Kyle Kaalberg, assistant professor-in-residence, Applied Health Sciences B.S.
  • Lori Ciccone, executive director of Research Administration
  • Miles Boulton, senior academic eligibility specialist
  • Tricia Mccroy, executive director of undergraduate advising
  • Zhanna Aronov, associate vice president, Retention And Outreach, Center for Academic Enrichment & Outreach

Study Updates

Transparency is a guiding principle for the study and we have a communication plan to create clarity across our workforce and ensure change (if any) to individuals is clear and communicated ahead of time. Emails, 性视界传媒 Today updates, virtual meetings, and HR website updates are some of the ways in which we will communicate updates to the university.

Please direct any questions about this study to rebelfuture@unlv.edu.