HR director accepts new position – Walters” departure puts employee compensation discussion on hold

After three and a half years in Moscow, University of Idaho Human Resources Executive Director Greg Walters has accepted the position of Assistant Vice President of Human Resources and Training at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

“It was time to move on, I think,” Walters said. “The University of the Pacific approached me themselves looking for somebody with a particular set of skills and experience, and I guess it was a good match.”

Walter”s last day on campus will be Feb. 5.   He said he will start his new position about two weeks after that, giving him and his wife time to move to Stockton.

UI Assistant Vice President for Finance Brian Foisy said this position was an excellent career opportunity for Walters.

“In terms of subject matter expertise, he”s a wealth of knowledge,” Foisy said.

Foisy said he hopes to work with the HR department to appoint an interim executive director.

Several current faculty and staff members as well as former administrators have already been recommended for the position. After that, Foisy said a national search committee will seek a more permanent director.

That process can take months, and Foisy said he tentatively hopes they will find someone by the end of the semester.

Foisy said appointing an interim director will put further exploration of employee compensation temporarily on hold.

The current classification-based compensation system, implemented in great part by Walters, is fully implemented, Foisy said.

“That plane is on autopilot, and it”s in the air,” Foisy said. “We”re very capable to just stay the course for a few months while we get a new director on board.”

Once a new director has been appointed, Foisy said UI President Chuck Staben has authorized him to research new employee compensation systems. The one Foisy said he is most interested in is a market-based system, which would base employee salaries based off similar positions at peer institutions, rather than the one-size-all classification approach employed currently.

Foisy said to him, a market-based system is the next logical evolution in the university”s current system – but he said he knows if the system will be successful, it has to be a project shared by the entire administration.

That”s why Foisy said when choosing a new HR executive director, his priority will be selecting someone with expertise who will be more concerned with the direction of the project than the pace of the project.

“Moving to classification was a Herculean effort,” Foisy said. “Any kind of system implementation like this is years of work, and Greg was really instrumental to helping to make a lot of the things happen. At the end of the day, his work really has become the foundation.”

Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @itshannah7

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