Tag: salary scale design

BUILDING YOUR SCALE: IMPLENTING YOUR NEW SCALE

Written by Kai Donesa on . Posted in Resources.

Now that your salary scale and benefits package is ready, the final step is implementing your new scale and communicating the changes to your teams. Equipped with your analysis and overall cost implications against your budget, you will now need to secure the necessary approval from management.

When seeking approval, begin by presenting any existing issues with the current salary scale and the challenges your salaries are facing against the external market. Take management through your process when you built your new salary scale, making sure to highlight:

  • The chosen salary survey you used as a basis
  • Your chosen set of target comparators that met your criteria
  • The difference of your existing salaries against your target market position
  • The steps you have taken to address the current issues and build future capacity
  • The overall cost

Finally, you also need to present to management your implementation plan and the timeframe that it will require, so they can assess the entire impact of the new scale.

Once approval has been granted, the next step is communicating the changes to staff. This is a crucial process because you will need to equip your managers with the right information for them to relay later to each of their teams or units. When discussing the changes with your staff, keep these in mind:

  • Discuss the work that went into building the salary scale and be clear on the company policy that supports the steps you have taken. This will ensure that your managers will be ready to answer any questions or reactions their staff may have.
  • Be clear about your implementation plan, what staff can expect, and when. This way, you can manage everyone’s expectations and hopefully have them feel excited about the changes that are soon to take place.

With the steps we have shared on implementing your new scale, we hope this has provided you with the insight you need to get started in designing your own pay structure. Birches Group is always ready to help organizations create a salary scale that will work for them. Contact us to learn more.

Want to know if your existing compensation practices have the elements of a good compensation program or if there are areas that could use some improvement? Take our quick Compensation Program Assessment Quiz to know your score!

Bianca manages our Marketing Team in Manila. She crafts messaging around Community™ concepts and develops promotional campaigns answering why Community™ should be each organization’s preferred solution, focusing on its simplicity and integrated approach. She has held various roles within Birches Group since 2009, starting as a Compensation Analyst and worked her way to Compensation Team Lead, and Training Program Services Manager. In addition to her current role in marketing and communications, she represents Birches Group in international HR conferences with private sector audiences.

Follow us on our LinkedIn for more content on pay management and HR solutions.

BUILDING YOUR SALARY SCALE: ADJUSTING YOUR SCALE

Written by Kai Donesa on . Posted in Resources.

Now that you’ve created your salary scale and examined your benefits package; the next step is adjusting your scale. Refining your scale will be a trial and error process until you get as close to your target as possible. There are several factors that will affect the impact of your scale, both externally and internally, so it is crucial to keep these in mind every step of the way.

When we think about external factors that affect the impact of your salary scale, factors such as average market movement, your budget, the number of incumbents per grade level in your organization, as well as the overall cost all need to be considered. When you start allocating adjustments for each grade level in your scale, using the average market movement and your budget, you can start adjusting your scale’s minimums and maximums, while keeping the number of incumbents per grade level in mind. Once you have gotten as close to your target market position as possible, check if your adjustments are all within budget. If not, keep adjusting and tweak where necessary.

While adjusting your pay ranges, you also want to keep in mind the issues that your existing salary scale has and how your changes will best address them. Are your hiring rates competitive at the job levels where you need more capacity? Do any of your existing staff fall below your current hiring rates? Similarly, do you have staff that are currently paid beyond the maximum salaries of their grade level? Do you make use of your salary ranges per grade level or do you find many of your staff clustered in certain points in each grade? Remember, adjusting your salary scale is not simply about updating salaries following market movement. It is also about making corrections where you know there are inefficiencies in the current pay structure.

Just as important as reaching your target market position and being competitive externally, is your team’s internal cohesion. Once you have reached your desired salary scale results, give it another look to see if everything makes sense. Pay close attention to your internal parameters, such as the progression from one grade level to the next, and see if the overlaps are reasonable. Examine your spans – the difference between your minimum and maximum salaries – as well and see if they align with the nature of each job level within your organization. Also, you will need to see how each of the adjustments you made will affect staff at every grade level. Checking for fair internal cohesion will ensure strong staff engagement to which they can tailor their development and build their careers over time.

Designing and refining salary scales is both a technical exercise and a sensitive one. As managers in human resources, we must realize that without an efficient salary structure in place, along with a solid job structure, achieving a strong engaged workforce will always be a challenge. And while we know that the salaries we set will not always make everyone happy – someone will always want higher pay, someone will challenge your chosen set of target comparators, and perhaps ask why they cannot have more benefits – what is important is making sure that the policies that went behind designing the salary scale is clear and communicated to staff. To learn more about how Birches Group can help you design a salary scale fit for your organization’s needs, contact us today.

Want to know if your existing compensation practices have the elements of a good compensation program or if there are areas that could use some improvement? Take our quick Compensation Program Assessment Quiz to know your score!

Bianca manages our Marketing Team in Manila. She crafts messaging around Community™ concepts and develops promotional campaigns answering why Community™ should be each organization’s preferred solution, focusing on its simplicity and integrated approach. She has held various roles within Birches Group since 2009, starting as a Compensation Analyst and worked her way to Compensation Team Lead, and Training Program Services Manager. In addition to her current role in marketing and communications, she represents Birches Group in international HR conferences with private sector audiences.

Follow us on our LinkedIn for more content on pay management and HR solutions.

BUILDING YOUR SALARY SCALE: ANALYZING BENEFITS

Written by Kai Donesa on . Posted in Resources.

Analyzing your benefits package is a step that can’t be missed. In many labor markets around the world, benefits are an essential part of total compensation. Particularly in developing markets, some benefits are mandatory, others may be cultural, and some given to address certain realities on the ground. Whether you are a local organization or an international one, it is essential to have a policy that aligns with your market’s local conditions.

Additionally, benefits are also an important part of a company’s Employment Value Proposition (EVP). Determining which benefits your company provides, the frequency it is provided, and grade levels eligible to receive them can be used a strategy to attract and retain talent, showcase company culture, and be seen as an employer of choice.

Once you have aligned your total compensation against the market, designing your benefits package will begin by ‘backing out’ your benefits to arrive at just base salary. From there, you can assess which benefits to keep and maintain, and which ones to change.

When examining your benefits package, here are three things we suggest you keep in mind:

  • What benefits are considered mandatory in your market? – different countries have different mandatory benefits. Some countries have mandatory bonuses on top of base salary, others may have mandatory housing or transportation allowances, while others have government-mandated health and pension contributions. As an employer, you will need to follow what is prescribed by law, especially if you are an international organization.
  • What benefits are common practice in your market? – knowing which benefits are commonly provided by most employers in your market can also help when designing your benefits package. Of course, it is not necessary to follow every single benefit provided. But those that are given by majority of the companies could be considered and examined further against your budget and policy.
  • What benefits are considered tax-advantageous to your staff? – depending on your market, some benefits can be considered taxable and others non-taxable. When thinking about benefits, employers can provide contributions or cash benefits that do not trigger a tax deduction from staff or maximize its non-taxable portion as much as possible.

Further, when designing your benefits package, employers also need to think about the grade levels that each benefit will apply to. Unless it is mandatory, not all benefits need to be provided to all grade levels and in the same manner. There are some benefits that are given to certain grade levels due to the nature of their jobs. Incentive-based benefits and representational benefits are more common for roles in managerial levels, while cash allowances and transportation benefits are more commonly provided to general and process-based grade levels.

Benefits can also be used by employers to encourage desirable behaviors from their staff. A classic example is using performance bonuses to reward achievement and a job well done at the end of the performance year. Another is the use of loans, seniority allowances, or even company-sponsored savings plans to promote staff retention. Sometimes, companies also hold activities that foster workplace culture among their employees, from team lunches, happy hour, to corporate social responsibility events. In our many years of conducting salary surveys and collecting data from employers in over 150 countries, we have certainly seen a lot of creativity from employers when using benefits that highlight their unique company culture.

When analyzing your benefits, we must remember that, in the end, benefits are cheaper than salaries. Base salary, bonuses, and allowances all come from the same internal budget, so every dollar that goes into providing more benefits will take away from the budget for other components of your staff’s employment package, such as pension and salary increases.

Birches Group can help your organization design a benefits package that aligns with your policy while meeting local conditions. Contact us to get started.

Want to know if your existing compensation practices have the elements of a good compensation program or if there are areas that could use some improvement? Take our quick Compensation Program Assessment Quiz to know your score!

Bianca manages our Marketing Team in Manila. She crafts messaging around Community™ concepts and develops promotional campaigns answering why Community™ should be each organization’s preferred solution, focusing on its simplicity and integrated approach. She has held various roles within Birches Group since 2009, starting as a Compensation Analyst and worked her way to Compensation Team Lead, and Training Program Services Manager. In addition to her current role in marketing and communications, she represents Birches Group in international HR conferences with private sector audiences.

Follow us on our LinkedIn for more content on pay management and HR solutions.