How To Make Compensation Transparency Work For Employees And Employers
Compensation has always been a tough subject, but transparency and innovation can actually make it into a bonding agent between employees and employers.
Are Employee Rewards Benefits or Bonuses?
A new study from the Reward & Employee Benefits Association indicates that employee engagement is considered a top strategic priority for 2016 (35.6% of respondents indicated this as number 1).
Employee Investment Equals Creativity in Business
Remember the Market Basket protests in Massachusetts this summer? They crippled business and were a compelling modern day example of the impact employees can have on the businesses they work for. Engaged employees don't just make happy employees, engaged employees
create innovation and great business ideas. Big employee engagement plans, like taking everyone on vacation for an tropical all-team retreat is great, but it isn't always in the budget. Lower-cost options can still have the desired affect on your workforce. Offering perks and rewards like extra days off, or gift cards to popular retailers like
Crutchfield,
Whole Foods Market and
CVS/pharmacy are great ways to provide off-the-cuff rewards to employees on the spot. Delivering rewards as promptly as possible using smaller, more flexible rewards is a great way to engage and appreciate employees without flying the whole team to Cancun. Engagement is crucial, there's a greater demand for jobs that provide perks and more diverse employment benefits. If you make an employee investment, employees will invest back in the company. They will invest their time, their brain power and their innovative ideas to make your organization more successful. As you invest in office space, new technology, don't forget to invest in people, because without them there is no business.
Lower Salaries & Better Employee Benefits: Part 2
Last week on the blog, we covered how employee recognition can help employers lower salary costs. Well this week, we take a less optimistic (but equally useful!) approach to the issue. As employers struggle to raise salaries, they need to keep in mind that employee benefits are part of compensation as well. Going beyond the "expected" benefits like health insurance, boosting an employee benefits program can be more cost effective and lead to employee satisfaction in the case of financial limitations. Adding benefits like a commuter program to help curb the cost of commuting or parking, or an organizational health and wellness initiative, or a company-wide employee recognition program that is well communication and used often can all be great ways for employers to boost benefits packages without boosting salaries. Adding these types of additional benefits allows employees to feel like they are getting something extra from their employers, while employers can apply fixed costs to these programs. Commuter programs can put a dent in employees' cost of commute. Health and wellness programs are a great way to motivate employees toward healthy behavior and maintain their own personal healthcare by offering preventative health screenings. Employee recognition programs are another way to provide non-cash bonuses in the form of a gift card or some extra time off that allow employees to indulge. Since all of these can be applied to an annual budget and used incrementally throughout the year it can put much less financial strain on the organization's total budget.
For more information on maintaining employee satisfaction through employee benefits check out Employee Benefits News.
Getting Levels of Performance and Incentives Right
In a continually changing business economy, finding the right mix of salary, benefits and incentives can be a daunting challenge to get right. There are categories of folks to consider in order to continually attract and recruit top performers, motivate all employees, and retain them. Of course that mix of benefits must help the company achieve its goals, so differentiating levels of performance with varying levels of incentives can help your company not “over-reward”. Gift cards have become the go-to option for incentives for many reasons, but their appeal is super-high when differentiating levels of performance since they can be given in so many denominations and the recipient can make their own decisions about what to purchase from the retailer or merchant. Have you created differing levels of achievement with goal specific incentives to match? Check out Business Finance Magazine’s
Compensation Challenges in 2012: Finding the Right Mix to learn more about differentiation and how to shuck and jive with change in your organization with regard to compensation and incentive budgets.
