Investing in our Workforce & Ongoing Commitment Toward Market Pay

Dear Faculty and Staff,

Welcome back from the holiday break. I wish you a happy and healthy 2026!

If you haven’t already opened the Chancellor’s message on employee compensation, please take a moment to read it. His announcement reflects the positive result of the difficult work you and your colleagues undertook during the fall semester.

With the significant savings KU achieved through your efforts, we are now able to directly reinvest $15 million into employee salaries on the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. This effort has allowed us to ensure that every staff member at Lawrence and Edwards is now at the 25th percentile or higher in market pay for their job title.

Pay adjustments mentioned in the Chancellor’s message will become effective Jan. 18 and will be reflected in the Feb. 13 paychecks of affected employees. Human Resources has developed a compensation FAQs page and will provide additional information to senior leaders, budget officers and HR Partners to facilitate this initiative.

Over the past year, we achieved a major advance for KU Lawrence and Edwards – launching an improved salary structure for all staff employees that aligns staff positions to pay grades that match external market benchmarks. This project and our investment build on previous efforts over the past six years, as we engaged in a sustained, multi-year drive to create a compensation structure that is both fair and financially sustainable. It’s work that began first by ensuring our staff are earning a minimum starting wage of $18 an hour or more. More recently, we worked with UAKU to improve promotion and tenure compensation adjustments. On an ongoing basis, we have taken unit-level actions to address competitive market pay for staff positions as funding opportunities have made it possible, and we will continue to do so. Through these efforts, many faculty and staff members have already been brought closer to appropriate market benchmark levels for their roles.

There is still more work to do. In addition to adjusting pay of staff currently under market range to their new minimum, we will also address compression caused by these adjustments. We will continue phased investment that aligns compensation practices and principles across all our KU campuses over the next four to five years, with the goal to ensure pay compression for long-term employees is addressed and all employees reach appropriate market pay levels.

As the Chancellor stated in his message, the university recognizes its collective bargaining obligations and is committed to meeting and conferring in good faith with each of the recognized bargaining units at KU. This message does not suggest that wage actions have been finalized or implemented for positions within a recognized bargaining unit where the meet-and-confer process has not yet concluded.

I am deeply appreciative of the hard work, adaptability, and shared commitment that made these wage increases possible and translate into tangible improvements for so many members of our community.

Thank you for all you do for KU.

Respectfully,

Barb

Barbara A. Bichelmeyer

Chief Academic Officer/Provost
and Executive Vice Chancellor for KU Lawrence and Edwards