Compensation Philosophy

The City of West Des Moines strives to provide the quality of life desired by the community through services provided by our City Departments. The most important vehicle for providing these services is through our employees. The purpose of West Des Moines' Compensation program is to attract, retain and motivate a highly qualified and competent work force to provide the quality of service our citizen's expect and deserve.

To Attract: The City of West Des Moines will be competitive with the labor market, subject to the availability of funds. This will be accomplished through regular competitive salary/benefit surveys of the applicable external markets.

To Retain and Motivate: The City of West Des Moines strives to retain and motivate a highly qualified and competent workforce. This will be accomplished through implementation of a pay for performance philosophy in the City's performance management programs.

Internal equity is maintained through a job evaluation program that reviews the components of each job within the City and realigns the positions with the City's pay structure and/or the external market when needed. In addition, the City's performance management system is monitored to ensure fair and consistent treatment of employees.

The City of West Des Moines strives to remain competitive in its benefit programs and to maintain a reasonable level of cost sharing with employees.

The City of West Des Moines strives to maintain a positive work environment through: appreciation/recognition programs to enhance employee morale; paid time-off programs to help employees balance work and personal responsibilities; skill/knowledge enhancement programs to provide employees with the tools to enhance their careers and/or personal development; and, policies designed to align City needs with flexibility for the employee.

Compensation Design

The salary structure provides an equitable, competitive and consistent basis for compensating employees. The salary structure is a logical and ordered framework that combines the internal job relationships developed through the job evaluation process with the external prevailing market conditions as reflected by the market salary analysis.