In 2022, the State of Tennessee began reworking how it compensates employees across its workforce. The effort involved moving toward market-based salary structures and reconsidering longstanding pay practices to better compete for talent.

But implementing a new compensation strategy across state government requires more than designing new salary ranges.

In this session, leaders from the Tennessee Department of Human Resources will share the decisions behind the transformation and what it took to put those changes into practice. They'll discuss the challenges of moving away from established approaches to pay and how they evaluated where compensation investments would have the greatest impact.

The team will also share the results reported since implementation, including changes in employee turnover and applicant activity, and what those findings have taught them about the effectiveness of the program. Attendees will gain a firsthand look at a large-scale compensation transformation and practical considerations for approaching similar changes within their own organizations.