JMU’s compensation philosophy is to pay employees in a manner sufficient to recruit and retain a high-performance workforce that provides quality service in a fiscally responsible manner to the university community and ultimately to the citizens of Virginia. Underlying this philosophy are the following principles:

• To establish base pay that is competitive with the labor market.
• To encourage employees to make a performance difference where results/outcomes are more important than entitlements (e.g., seniority, hierarchy or expectation of additional pay for changing responsibilities).
• To provide compensation that focuses on employees gaining demonstrable skills and competencies that are critical to the accomplishment of the university and/or work unit missions.
• To focus on the value of total compensation, which includes but is not limited to salary and non-salary benefits such as healthcare, retirement, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition waivers, annual, and sick leave.
• To be mindful of pay equity across all EEO categories and facilitate fair and non-discriminatory compensation.

The university will administer its compensation program in a manner consistent with the mission, goals and business objectives of JMU. The university’s SAP will:

• Assure that comparable jobs are valued with similar methodology and assigned to the same role.
• Promote employee focus on university and work unit missions and outcomes.
• Be market responsive and fiscally responsible.
• Be administratively efficient and responsive to organizational changes.
• Be easily understood and communicated.
• Facilitate recruitment and retention of qualified employees.
• Motivate employees by giving supervisors options for rewarding high performance employees.
• Support management in the realization of organizational objectives.