Denver is set to audit how it determines the pay structure for jobs across the city.

Denver Auditor Timothy O’Brien is accepting proposals from firms to audit how the city’s Human Resources Department determines city staff’s salaries and pay scales. The winning firm will compare pay of city staff to their private-sector counterparts and gauge where Denver falls an an employer.

“One of my goals as Denver’s Auditor is to focus on the areas of greatest risk to the city. Because the payroll is such a significant part of the city’s budget, a flawed pay and benefit-setting methodology could have huge consequences,” O’Brien said. “As a large employer, we have the competing interests of wanting to offer salaries competitive enough to attract the best talent and wanting to be efficient with the taxpayers’ dollars. Fortunately, we can tap into expertise in the community to assess the validity of our annual pay and benefit survey.”

The city’s HR department by charter is required to annually survey of pay when it makes recommendations for that year’s pay rates. The external auditing firm will keep the city’s auditing staff from having to audit their own pay rates.

“Asking an external audit firm to conduct this audit avoids any conflict of interest,” O’Brien said. “While I’m sure that our audit staff would strive for objectivity, hiring private sector auditors avoids putting the staff in the position of evaluating their own pay and benefits.”

The goal is to make sure the city remains competitive as a place to work while also offering assurances to taxpayers that salaries are inline with market value, said Kathleen MacKenzie, spokeswoman for the Auditor’s office. The audit will compare salaries for employees and look at how the Human Resources department calculates pay rates and increases.

“We think it will take between three to six months (to complete). Our goal is to either have recommendations by the time the salary survey is performed next year or to be able to say, great job you’re doing the exact right thing,” MacKenzie said. “I think there are benefits to working in government, but job seekers have a lot of options. We want to be competitive with the market.”