You will understand the “big picture” of defining your pay philosophy, and why it is a cornerstone of all other C&B activities.

• How it all fits together
• The reward mix
• Steps to designing a new compensation structure

You will learn how to write impactful job descriptions,. You will discuss different methods of performing job evaluations and how to decide on which grading structure is best for your organisation.

5 steps to a salary structure

Job descriptions

• Job architecture
• Different formats for job descriptions
• Writing impactful JDs
• Communicating role expectations to employees

Job evaluations

• Why evaluate jobs ?
• Overview of the main job evaluation methods
• Typical triggers for large grading projects
• Overview of different job evaluation methods
  (Hay, Mercer iPE, Willis Towers Watson, MEIR, Paterson…)
• Designing your own job evaluation system
• Examples of end result from different job evaluation approaches
• All jobs are evaluated, now what ?

Defining pay

• Trade-offs when designing salary ranges
• Narrow banding
• Broad banding
• An alternative

You will learn why you should not have more than 3 salary ranges, and you will uncover how to flawlessly participate to salary surveys. You will also master the basics of mathematics for managing midpoints, and understand which elements to look at when updating your salary ranges.

Participating in salary benchmarking

• Why participate in surveys
• What to benchmark
• Preparing the survey file
• Initial interpretation of the survey results

Updating your salary ranges

• What do I need to know for an up-to-date salary structure ?
• Target position to market
• The world of percentiles
• Extrapolating percentiles from market data
• Defining “the market”
• Defining your peer group
• Why we need to age data
• Using survey results – special cases

This section covers how the Compensation function interacts and supports Talent Acquisition in many different ways.

• Using surveys for recruitment and bidding
• Setting packages at the current market value
• What if a candidate is paid above the maximum of the salary range?
• Leveraging employee referral schemes
• Package negotiation

This section describes current practices in pay for performance as well as innovative trends and ways to reduce bias in performance evaluations

Performance Management and Pay for Performance : common practice in the GCC

Assess the effectiveness of your PM system

Best practices :

• Ratings
• Distribution curve
• Calibration
• Performance Improvement Plans

New trends :

• Agile/continuous performance management
• Reducing bias thanks to neuroscience,

Tips for implementing pay-for-performance

The role of line managers

We will discuss which criteria to use for awarding salary increases and promotions, in which order to apply the increases, how to set your budget, and the principles behind merit matrices for individual salary increase recommendations. Promotions and managing allowances will also be covered.

Salary increases :

• Employee position in the salary range
• Your pay philosophy : how does an employee move through the range ?
• Different types of merit increases
• Preparing the salary increases
• The order of salary increases
• Setting the budget

Merit matrices

• Example of a typical merit matrix
• Principles in managing merit matrices

Exercise : Out of cycle merit increase

Promotions

• Promotions numbers – background
• Individual criteria for eligibility to promotion
• Typical promotion increases in the GCC

Allowances :

• Trends in accommodation
• Trends in education
• Other trends

This module covers some principles around incentive design, and discusses payout curves in detail. You will be able to understand the mechanics of the scheme in your organisation, so that you can perform payout calculations accurately.

Background on incentives

• What is the purpose of variable pay ?
• Bonuses vs incentives
• Different types of incentives – spotlight on profit-sharing, gainsharing,
  spot awards and milestone awards
• Eligibility to various incentives
• Tips for calculating bonuses

Incentive plan design

• Linking incentive design to company strategy
• 5 questions to design an incentive plan
• Fixed/variable pay ratio
• Considerations on performance measures
• Payout curve
• Design ownership
• Overview of various sales incentive plans

Discover metrics that indicate a potential decrease in employee engagement, watch recommendations from world-famous Dan Pink, and learn about designing recognition schemes.

Employee engagement:

• Engagement and business results
• 3 measures for sustainable engagement
• Factors influencing employee engagement
• Hard metrics and soft metrics
• Autonomy, mastery and purpose
• Linking engagement to rewards

Employee retention:

• Dispelling myths about retention schemes
• Designing your retention scheme
• In Real Life : a customer service retention scheme

Recognition schemes:

• The value of recognition programs
• Combining 2 different approaches to recognition
• Special recognition : loyalty, Nationals, spot awards
• Peer-to-peer recognition