Xerox to end pay freezes in 2015
- The company will start a pay review process that focuses on underpaid top performers.
- Those reviews will be done in the first three months of 2015, with raises to follow in April.
- Employees whose pay is low compared to market rates and who are higher performers will get raises.
- Xerox employs roughly 6,300 in the Rochester region.
After several years of frozen pay for many of its employees, Xerox Corp. plans to thaw the purse strings.
In an internal note, the area's fourth-largest employer notified employees that it will do a company-wide pay review that will start in 2015 and mean pay raises for more — though not all — workers.
According to Xerox, Chief Human Resources Officer Tom Maddison in an internal online chat said, "We recognize the importance of a formal and consistent annual process to review employees' pay. In 2015, we will implement a company-wide pay planning process, consistently managed across all businesses and geographies."
Xerox said the new annual pay review plan will look at how employees' salaries stack up compared to the marketplace, and also individual performance. Those reviews will be done in the first three months of 2015, with raises to follow in April.
"Not everyone will get an increase," Xerox wrote in the internal note. "This new annual process will focus pay increases on employees whose pay is low compared to market rates and who are higher performers."
Xerox employs roughly 6,300 in the Rochester region.
The Xerox pay raises come as, nationwide, the average worker should expect to see a raise of roughly 3 percent, according to projections and surveys from such human resources giants as WorldatWork and Mercer.
In the Rochester region, the annual Rochester Business Alliance Pay Trends Survey similarly indicated that most surveyed employers in the Rochester area expect to hand out raises averaging 2.9 percent next year. Only 4 percent of local employers surveyed expected to freeze pay.
Wages in the Rochester region actually have been growing more slowly than 3 percent in recent years. According to state Labor Department data, the average 2013 wage in the Rochester area was $44,865, up about 1.8 percent over the 2012 average. And that in turn was up 1.6 percent from 2011's average.
One group that has avoided the pay freezes at Xerox has been its unionized workers. Pay raises were part of the most recent contract for Local 14-A of the Rochester Regional Joint Board, and the union signed a new four-year contract with Xerox earlier this year that provides a pair of lump sum payments, though not percentage raises, said Gary Bonadonna Sr., manager of the Rochester Regional Joint Board.
MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com
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When was the last time you had a pay raise? Has it been years since your current job increased your salary? We would like to know. Contact reporter Matthew Daneman at mdaneman@gannett.com, on Twitter @mdaneman or at (585) 258-2470.