North Carolina DOT’s Skill-Based Pay Program: A Working Model for Training and Compensating Highway Workers

To meet the challenges of declining personnel resources, increased contract administration, and continuously increasing paved-road mileage, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is developing flexibility and multiple skills in its approximately 4,050 employees classified as Transportation Workers. The department is the first North Carolina agency to implement such a program on a broad scale. A training and compensation system, known as Skill-Based Pay, helps all transportation workers develop job-related technical skills through structured training. The goal of the program is to create a workforce highly trained across various skill levels, keeping NCDOT competitive in the market. The program promotes flexibility and equity in broad, generic job classifications that meet employees’ and NCDOT’s training needs. This meshes well with the department’s Performance Management program, which encourages employees to acquire skills and rewards them when they do. The program is built on “skill blocks”—unique sets of tasks and duties selected as significant by each operating unit and categorized as entry, intermediate, journey, and advanced levels—each of which is worth a set dollar value. Each skill block is achieved through a four-step process: testing, on-the-job training, certification, and compensation. In this system, employees advance through the four levels but remain in the same broad class of Transportation Worker. The program has created enthusiasm among workers, and the workers drive the program.