INDIANAPOLIS — Some IU Health employees will be getting more cash in their pockets starting next month as the hospital system increases their base pay.
Entry-level employees at Indiana University Health are getting a pay raise starting in April. It is part of an initiative to pay all team members a more livable wage.
About 4,800 employees state-wide will benefit from the base pay increase or wage adjustment. This impacts about 13% of IU Health's workforce.
As the starting base rate is adjusted, those employees making between $14 and $15.49 an hour will benefit from a wage adjustment.
This is great news for LaQuana Davis, a single mom of four kids. She started working full-time as an environmental services worker at Methodist Hospital in January.
"Where I live at right now I pay $1,175, with no help and a dollar or two more and once I pay my rent, I barely can do things for me and my kids," Davis said. "It means a whole lot to me. It is going to help me financially, like I am a single mother, so financially help me be able to do more things that I would want to do for my kids and for myself and to take care of my home itself."
This increase comes on top of a pay raise from $11 per hour to $13 per hour in December 2019.
"We are super committed to making sure our lowest-paid team members have the opportunity to greater economic prosperity," Liz Dunlap, IU Health chief HR officer, said. "And one of the ways we want to do that is by raising our starting wage rate."
Dunlap said the 2019 pay increase was a contributing factor to help them attract and retain employees as they saw a 19% improvement in turnover over the past year.
"One thing that we did last year is that we raised the max range to all jobs to at least $18 an hour, so before a job might have had a cap at say $16.50 an hour, for example, what it meant was that you could never increase your base wage rate beyond that amount," Dunlap said. "We raised that to $18 an hour so everybody has an opportunity to get to that over time. And we also try to make sure that our cost of medical insurance, the premiums that employees contributes are lower for our lower paid team members, so it is on a sliding scale. So it's part of a bigger strategy of trying to do the right thing for our lowest-paid team members."
All team members at IU Health also received a $600 COVID-incentive payment in December to thank employees for the extraordinary efforts in COVID-related responsibilities.
Hoosiers looking for an entry-level position that does not require special certifications can apply for EVS and food nutrition opportunities as IU Health is currently hiring.
To apply: https://careers.iuhealth.org/.
