The United Church of Canada Total Compensation Review task group invites you to apply to attend a focus group on one of three different questions, which will assist us in the recommendations going forward to the General Council Executive and ultimately the 45th General Council.
We have received rich and thoughtful feedback during our Webinar Consultation with Ministers: (101 participants); Webinar Consultation with Treasurers (178 participants); and through the 780 responses from the survey. We thank you, and are so grateful for your detailed responses on this topic.
Your comments have deepened our questions, and sharpened our discussions! Before we go back to General Council Executive, we’d like to invite a few you to help us reflect in a bit more detail on three of the options that are emerging for us. Unfortunately we can’t include everyone in these focus groups – in order to allow for vigorous and thoughtful discussion, the focus groups will be limited to 15 persons each. We’ll ensure regional, gender, and ministry status balance to the membership of each group.
Dates and times
Our Zoom-based focus groups will be on
November 13 at 2:00 pm ET and 7:00 pm ET.
(please click the links to see the start times in each of Canada's time zones.) When you register, you’ll be asked to choose your time slot, and the group you’d like to attend.
Applications will close on
November 3 at noon. Confirmation of your participation will be emailed on November 8 along with mandatory reading prior to the focus group session. We are in the process of organizing a francophone session, as well as one for our Indigenous ministry group. A date is yet to be determined.
The three breakout groups will cover the following topics:Focus Group 1: Exploring a Grid System for Compensation
During our conversations in the spring online consultations and through the results of the surveys that the Task Group has sent out there were several factors that individuals felt should be included in a grid type model for position assessment and thus level of compensation.
The General Council office (GCO) currently uses a grid type system to assess compensable factors that affect employment. These include Knowledge, Experience, Skills, Accountability and Physical Demand. All positions are assessed on these factors.
We will draw some comparisons to the GCO system and will discuss potential factors that the Pastoral Relations system could be designed around.
Focus Group 2: Exploring a Centralized Payroll Model
During our conversations with treasurers and ministry personnel and in the results from the online survey, there were many calls for “help” from General Council. Help was defined as financial and resource-based assistance. It was often expected this help would come from General Council:
- direct assistance with meeting the budgets of Communities of Faith (CoF)
- providing guidance with governance matters and sharing of specific skills
- help with salary negotiations
With these comments in mind, the task group has considered what a centralized pastoral relations compensation model might look like and how it would work. This model would be based on CoFs sharing their resources to offer a sustainable future for CoFs regardless of geographic locale and financial ability. Each CoF would contribute their share (based on an assessment on their resources) to a centralized account, from which all ministry personnel salaries would be paid.
The task group has only initiated conversations of such a model and does not have a detailed proposal of the model. We are aware that significant resources would be required to fully develop such a model as there are wide reaching implications of such a shift in approach to compensation.
This focus group will consider the potential advantages and disadvantages of this model and gauge whether there is enough interest and energy in the system for another major change to warrant a significant spend of time and resources to develop a full proposal of such a model.
Focus Group 3: Exploring Adjustments to our Current Compensation Model
This group will look at what is currently included in the total compensation package and what you might like to see changed. We recognize that we continue to work within sustainability limits for the church. There are no additional pools of funds available, although there are other benefits that may not require additional dollars to offer.
What might you be willing to let go of in exchange for other opportunities or benefits? What are you wanting more of? What would you hate to lose?
