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Interactive Exercise
Problem Statement
Elkhorn, Inc. is a producer of specialized plastic films and sheets with $2 billion in annual revenue. The company has three production facilities in the United States:
- Conroe, Texas
- Aurora, Colorado
- Allentown, Pennsylvania
Headquarters is in Denver, Colorado.
Geraldine Brown is a manufacturing engineer for Elkhorn. She has been working for the company for 5 years and over that time has become a valued employee. She is paid at the 65th percentile. Since she was hired, she has been working at the Conroe, Texas production facility.
Like many people, she started working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic and occasionally went into the plant to troubleshoot problems. Much of her time is spent coordinating production and maintenance plans, reviewing quality control, and improving the manufacturing process. Her main responsibility is the Conroe plant, but she also works with engineers and technicians at the other plants. She found that she was just as effective working from home as in the office.
She is originally from Colorado and wants to move back to Colorado Springs to be closer to family and she knows that the cost of living there is more in line with Conroe than Denver, which is more expensive. She believes she can work remotely from Colorado Springs as well as anywhere. The Denver HQ and the Aurora plant are about an hour away.
Geraldine is requesting that she be allowed to work remotely from Colorado Springs and go into Denver or Aurora on an as needed basis. She will continue to be the manufacturing engineer for Conroe but transfer to Aurora or Denver if there is an opening and continue to work remotely.
Geraldine’s supervisor in the Denver office is inclined to allow her to work remotely since it has worked well, but there is the issue of pay. He has asked Elkhorn’s compensation analyst to look into a potential pay adjustment.
The analyst will consider whether Geraldine should be paid based on the national average, the HQ standard, or her Conroe pay.
We’ll use ERI’s Salary Assessor software to research these issues.