Being intentional about having a defined compensation strategy is extremely important to business success. Although, employee payroll is typically the largest expense for every company, many companies have not given much thought to how they compensate their employees. Are you getting the most bang for your buck (pardon the pun) for your overall payroll dollars?
For a company to be properly set for growth, they must be paying their employees competitively. We know that successful companies “pay for performance” which means they pay top performers higher wages to retain them long-term. Nothing devalues, deflates morale and causes turnover more than paying your new hires more than existing proven employees who have worked for the company for years. Take a look at your existing employees’ pay and ask yourself these questions.
- Are you paying competitively compared to your key competitors?
- Do you pay your top performers more than your average performers?
- Do you have a plan for what salary to offer new hires?
- Do you pay well performing long term employees more than new hires?
Many factors play into individual pay and your overall compensation strategy. For example, a Controller role will pay very differently in Dallas vs. New York, Atlanta, or Chicago. Other key factors that drive pay will be education level, Bachelor’s degree vs. an MBA, years of experience, industry type, and company revenue. You might find a Controller role will pay $80,000 with one set of criteria and $130,000 with another set of criteria for the same role in a different location.
We all know that hope is not a strategy; therefore, don’t just hope you are paying your people well enough to keep them employed. At HR Catalyst, we use a highly reliable technology driven compensation tool to help clients determine what competitive pay is for most positions nationally. We help our client companies work through these complex issues around compensation. We can do a single compensation benchmark assessment for a newly created position in your company to understand what to pay to attract the right talent externally. We can also help your organization create an entire compensation structure with pay grades or bands for your workforce, whether you have 20 employees or 1500 employees.
If employee pay and your company’s overall compensation strategy is something you are concerned about, you can set up an appointment with me below to discuss how we can help.