Small State University is facing the dilemma of how to allocate the $17,400 that the state agreed to give to the management department. Each qualified candidate’s employment information is given to help determine the merit raise decision. Before the decision can finalize, research and analysis will be conducted. A case solution will include the implementation of management approval, budget recommendations, communication and essential steps of the new policy to the university, and fair distribution of merit raise. Keywords: merit raise, human resources, performance evaluation, merit raise procedures
Introduction Small State University has 40 full-time and more than 30 part-time faculty members and enrolls about 8,000 students. There are five departments within the university, which include management, marketing, finance, and accounting, decision sciences, and information technology. The state agreed to give raises of $17,400 to the management department. The faculties in the department are evaluating yearly and their performance is based on teaching, research, and service. The department chairs utilize Far Exceeds Standards, Exceed Standards, Meets Standards, and Fails to Meet Standards are to use judge a faculty’s performance. At Small State, teaching and research are more important than service. A two year student course evaluation is used to measure a faculty’s teaching performance. The number of articles published over a three-year period is use to evaluate a faculty’s research performance. Lastly, service is based on the accomplishments of service to the university, college, profession, and community within a two-year period. As the department chair, it is my responsibility to divide the $17,400 fairly among the faculty members within the law. As an educational institution, merit pay is designed to encourage high effort by rewarding productivity. However, there are times that merit pay is overly awarded, which cause