It’s a critical question for any company to answer: Does your organization view employees as an investment or an expense? If you regard your employees as an expense, you probably don’t need to read the rest of this article. However, if you see them as an investment, does your organization truly ...
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The longest journeys tend to beg the question: “Are we there yet?” Certainly, the quest for pay equity has been a long journey indeed – for women, people of color, and others in pursuit of a level playing field for compensation. It’s a worthy and necessary destination that officially began i...
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When it comes to fair and effective employee compensation practices, pay transparency and pay equity should be top priorities. In fact, according to WorldatWork, these are likely to be two of the most important responsibilities in human capital in the next 2 to 3 years. Unfortunately, even though pa...
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Differences abound between transactional and strategic human resources, but even if the distinctions are clear to HR generalists, these terms get a little fuzzy when it comes to employee pay matters. Nonetheless, it’s important to understand the distinctions as these can be important to establishi...
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At Total Reward Solutions, we offer a broad range of employee compensation and total rewards services for organizations of all sizes. Oftentimes, smaller companies have a single person in charge of HR compensation programs while larger companies have sizeable employee populations that require more c...
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Market pricing is an essential component of any successful employee compensation and total rewards program. Unfortunately, market pricing is also complex and cumbersome, with many factors and moving parts. These parts include the processes of submitting salary survey data, determining your market pr...
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When it comes to your organization’s compensation programs, none is more important than your base pay program. A base pay program provides structure and organizes your jobs so you can attract and retain talent. It establishes a baseline for merit pay, salary range variations, and regulatory compli...
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It may be no surprise that job seekers want essential information – including salary, benefits, and location – when they research job ads. What may be more surprising is that when assessing long-term potential with an organization, job seekers want transparency, too. I address these issues in my...
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Employee retention is essential to workforce stability and prudent compensation management regardless of labor market conditions. But when the labor market is tight in a robust economy – when employees are more likely to look for better paying or more satisfying employment elsewhere – employee r...
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When demand for workers goes up (in a tight labor market due to low unemployment), entry-level wages rise. Perhaps that’s no surprise. What might be surprising, however, is that many employers are aggressively vying for workers by offering more than double the federally-mandated minimum wage. Add ...
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With five different generations in the workforce, it can be challenging to understand and balance their diverse expectations when it comes to total rewards. These rewards include everything an employee values in the work relationship, including compensation, benefits, work/life balance, performance ...
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Gender pay equality remains elusive more than 50 years since passage of the Equal Pay Act, and nearly 10 years since the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became law. And despite widespread awareness of the “gender pay gap”, many companies continue to do little to resolve the inequity. This inaction c...
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Pay differentials – when used properly – can be an important part of a successful employee compensation program. In fact, using pay differentials can signal your employees that you recognize variances in work conditions and are willing to reward employees who accept less desirable positions, shi...
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The realities of compensation for millennials can be surprising, simply because this group is newer to the workforce. Lacking years of deep “real world” experience, millennials might be surprised by many aspects of current compensation practices and standards in today’s workplace. With that in...
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Compensation satisfaction is extremely important to U.S. workers, but actual satisfaction in that category falls far short of the desire. This is according to a recent survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The 35 percentage-point gap regarding compensation was the largest not...
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Compensation budgeting is often misunderstood, underemphasized and oversimplified. Many employers tend to factor in only an employee’s annual salary and benefits when considering personnel costs. But this shortsighted approach can lead to a budget shortfall and employee dissatisfaction – two cri...
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Compensation discrimination can be costly – not just for victims of the practice, but also for organizations that must defend themselves against such claims. For example, Google recently found itself on the defensive after the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) claimed the tech giant discriminated aga...
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Compensation communication can be a critical link toward improving employee morale, performance, overall satisfaction, and company loyalty – and yet it is often an afterthought. Let's take a look at how damaging poor compensation communication can be, and how to use it effectively to motivate and ...
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The new EEO-1 report (the Employer Information Report) for 2017 includes significant changes that will particularly impact employers with more than 100 employees. And since this report is based on full-year data from 2017, if your company hasn't already begun to adjust your employee data recording, ...
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Has your base pay system been in place several years without being reviewed or updated? If so, your company could be falling behind your industry, your competitors, and marketplace standards. That means you could be paying too much base pay in your current total rewards system, paying too little to ...
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