Reduce the Ratio of Supervisory to Non-supervisory Employees

As of August 16, 2011, the City had 33,606 active employees.  The table below details the number of non-supervisory and supervisory employees and the resulting ratio of non-supervisory employees to supervisory employees.  The breakdown between supervisory and non-supervisory employees is based on an analysis of the City’s position titles.  This is a superficial analysis that simply relied on analyzing whether a title was a likely manager position.  The basic criteria used were if the words Commissioner, Director, Chief, Supervisor, Superintendent, or Foreman, appeared in the title, it was generally assumed to be a managerial position.  However, if the title included “Assistant to”, then it was not assumed to be managerial.  Additionally, a distinction was made between titles with Supervisor versus Supervising.  For titles that were structured as a Supervisor of some function, those were generally assumed to be managerial.  However, if the titles were structured with “Supervising” being used a qualifier for another title, it was assumed that these titles just signified a higher status of frontline position rather than a managerial one.

Update 9/27/2011 @ 7 p.m.

In order to see which titles were classified as supervisory and conduct your own analysis of the City’s position titles download the spreadsheet below.

• IGO Supervisory vs. Non-supervisory Employee Analysis- August 16, 2011 Payroll

(end of update)

Under this option, the City would increase the ratio of non-supervisory employees to supervisory employees to a minimum of 10 in every City department.  The table below shows the reduction in managers that this would entail by individual department.

Note: The Department of Aviation (CDA) was removed from this analysis because its employees are funded by airport operations and any savings from reducing management in CDA would be restricted to airport operations and could not be used to offset the City’s budget deficit.

The average salary of the 4,145 supervisory positions is $103,500. Thus if the City were to eliminate these 1,372 positions the City would save approximately $142 million, assuming the positions eliminated had average salaries for all the supervisory positions.  Including fringe benefits at 35 percent of salary the total savings would be approximately $190 million.  This also assumes that the City would not add managers to those departments with a ratio above 10.

Discussion and Additional Questions

As described above, this analysis is based on a superficial analysis of City position titles.  For instance, nine titles classified as supervisory in the Inspector General’s Office are not supervisory positions.  Conversely, in the Mayor’s office, an Administrative Assistant title actually corresponds to the Chief Data Officer and an Assistant to the Mayor title really corresponds to the Chief Technology Officer.  Therefore, in this analysis, these positions are not included as supervisory titles.  In the Fire and Police Departments, which have the largest potential staff reductions, this is because lieutenants, captains, and sergeants, in the case of the Police department, were categorized as supervisory.  However, it is unclear whether these positions should be categorized as supervisory.

So, if the City was to implement this option, it first must obtain reliable data that accurately shows the ratio of non-supervisory employees to supervisory employees.  To do this, there first must be fixed criteria for what constitutes a manager.  The Texas State Auditor provides the following criteria: [1]

“Manager has the responsibility for strategic operations and planning and

• Formulates statewide policy or directs the work of an agency, higher education institution, or subdivision; OR

• Administers one or more statewide policies or programs of an agency, higher education institution, or subdivision; OR
• Manages, administers, and controls a local branch office of an agency, higher education institution, or subdivision, including the physical, financial, or human resources; OR
• Has substantial responsibility in human resources management, legislative relations, public information, or the preparation and administration of budgets;”

To further explore this issue, the City Council could require each department to categorize their employees as either managers or non-managers and then provide a breakdown by each function.  Conversely, a position audit could be conducted to make appropriate connections of title to responsibilities.  Both would provide a meaningful picture of the actual ratio of managers to non-supervisors throughout the City.

Budget Details