The Prior Studies · Findings & Gaps
The County has studied this before. Here is why it keeps coming back.
Isle of Wight commissioned classification and compensation studies in 2015 and 2021, and is back in market in 2026. Understanding the prior work, and where it fell short, is how this study breaks the cycle instead of repeating it. Every figure below is from the public record. We analyze the studies, not the firm that produced them.
Eleven years, three studies, the same finding
2015
First study
Recommended sheriff's deputies receive a 3% raise every year.
2021
Second study (briefed Apr 2022)
Found employees 7.4% / 9.0% / 9.9% below market minimum / midpoint / maximum; recommended ~$906,693 in raises and two pay plans.
Feb 2022
Emergency action
Before the study even landed, the Board voted a 7% raise for deputies (captain and below) because recruiting could not wait.
2024
Market refresh
A market study was commissioned just three years later, signaling the structure had already drifted.
2026
Full re-study (this RFP)
The County is back in market again, asking for a comprehensive classification and compensation study.
What the 2021 study found and recommended
| Workforce evaluated | 402 employees |
| Comparators surveyed | 14 Virginia localities, from the town of Smithfield to Virginia Beach |
| Market gap found | 7.4% below minimum, 9.0% below midpoint, 9.9% below maximum |
| Structure recommended | Two pay plans (general + public safety) |
| General plan | 30 grades, ~5% apart; low grade ~$25,000 to $40,000; top grade ~$102,000 to $167,000 |
| Public safety plan | Low grade $30,000 to $49,500; top grade ~$88,000 to $146,000 |
| Employees due raises | 141 general + 102 public safety |
| Average raise | ~$3,000 general; ~$4,500 public safety |
| Total recommended cost | $906,693 |
In the County's own words
“Six years later, we're starting at $39,000 for deputy recruits. My people live, work, eat here in the Hampton Roads area, and we're competing against the seven cities.”
The County Sheriff, 2022, on the 2015 study's recommendation being outpaced by the market.
The recruiting pressure was urgent enough that the Board acted with an emergency 7% deputy raise before the 2021 study results arrived. The process could not keep pace with the problem.
The analysis
Six gaps a fresh study must close.
Recurrence is the tell.
Three studies in eleven years, each finding the County below market again. The 2015 flat 3%-per-year recommendation was outpaced so badly that the Board made an emergency 7% deputy raise before the 2021 study even landed. A study that must be repeated every few years is not a solution to the problem; it is a subscription to it.
What we do differently: We deliver a salary-administration maintenance system the County operates between studies, so the structure stays current instead of drifting until the next costly re-study.
The 2021 numbers are already stale, and the gap has widened.
The 7.4% to 9.9% gap was measured on 2020 to 2021 data. Hampton Roads wages rose sharply through 2025, and the cities the County competes with raised pay aggressively. The real 2026 gap is almost certainly larger than the figure on the prior report.
What we do differently: We benchmark against the comparators' current adopted pay plans, pulled live from the public record, not a snapshot that is several wage cycles old.
The comparator pool did not match the County's competitive reality.
The prior pool ranged from the town of Smithfield, a community of roughly 8,000 inside the County itself, up to Virginia Beach, a city of 459,000 and twelve times the County's size. A pool that wide can distort the midpoints that decide who gets a raise and how much.
What we do differently: We use exactly the twelve jurisdictions the County named in this RFP, banded into the cities it competes against for talent and the true county-size peers, so the midpoints reflect the County's actual market.
A flat 5% / 30-grade lattice does not match an uneven market.
Real market premiums are not uniform. Public safety, licensed water and wastewater operators, building inspectors, and IT carry steeper premiums than a flat 5% step between grades can hold. A uniform lattice can quietly re-create the compression it was built to fix.
What we do differently: We model market movement at the job-family level and run a dedicated compression analysis, including the supervisory compression the County calls out in this RFP.
Two plans under-segment a Virginia county.
A general plan plus a public safety plan leaves out structures specific to a Virginia county: the constitutional-officer staff funded in part by the State Compensation Board, and state-supervised Social Services. Those do not slot cleanly into two buckets.
What we do differently: Our fourteen-family architecture handles constitutional officers, Social Services, utilities, and the rest on their own terms, with FLSA determined for every title.
Nothing durable was left behind.
A static report drifts. The County needed a market refresh within three years and a full re-study within five. The deliverable did not give the County a way to see the market or maintain its own structure between engagements.
What we do differently: The County keeps this live portal and the cost-to-close decision tool. It can verify every source, model its own scenarios, and maintain currency without waiting for the next study.
Why a fresh voice is the advantage here
The relationship advantage becomes a liability.
A repeat engagement holds the prior data and the prior relationship. But it also holds the prior method, the one that has now produced a below-market finding three times running, and it cannot openly examine its own past work. We arrive already knowing the prior studies' exact public findings, with real comparator data pulled independently, and we show the County these gaps plainly. Continuity is only an asset if the prior approach worked. The record shows it kept the County on a treadmill. A fresh, independent study is how the County steps off it.
Sources (public record)
- Smithfield Times, “IW compensation study recommends $900K in raises” (April 2022)
- Figures for the 2015 study, the February 2022 emergency deputy raise, and the County officials' statements are reported in the same coverage. The 2024 market study and 2026 re-study are referenced in RFP-2026-308.