Skip to Content

Division of Human Resources

Staff Pay Philosophy

In order to fulfill our primary mission, the University of South Carolina is strongly committed to attracting and retaining a highly qualified, top performing and diverse workforce.  The Division of Human Resources is responsible for ensuring a consistent framework for the effective administration of the staff classification and compensation programs, which includes the management of the staff compensation program to effectively promote the recruitment and retention of highly qualified employees. Within the boundaries of financial feasibility, our goal is to compensate USC employees in a manner that is reasonable, externally competitive and internally equitable, and shall be based upon performance as recognized within the work unit.

The University of South Carolina and the Division of Human Resources will provide transparency regarding its compensation programs and administrative practices.

Compensation Commitments
  • Salaries for employees will be established at levels that recognize the individual's skills, and experience, with performance also recognized following hire, while considering the salary levels of current employees in comparable positions.
  • Pay mechanisms will be made available to reward and retain high-performing, top talent. 
  • As funding permits, and as appropriate, salary increases shall give priority to recognizing performance, maintaining market alignment, supporting internal equity, and retaining key personnel through various pay mechanisms.
  • Internal consistency: comparing both internal positions and salaries of incumbents within positions in terms of their relative worth and contributions to the organization’s objectives to determine a fair value.
  • All salary actions will be reviewed for internal equity by the Division of Human Resources and will take into consideration individual employee qualifications, market competitiveness, scarcity of talent and other pertinent factors impacting the retention of top talent.
  • Market values will be reviewed on a routine basis to determine the university’s market competitiveness.
Pay Administration

The Division of Human Resources issues the final determination in collaboration with business units on all determinations regarding requests for hiring salaries, potential salary adjustments, position creation and maintenance, reclassification, and additional changes to organizational units impacting employees.


Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.

©