Do you keep old versions of job descriptions? Do you include an effective date in your job descriptions?

If an employer sponsors employees on visas and is updating job descriptions, they must track changes to show the before and after versions of the job description. This documentation helps Legal determine whether the changes are significant enough to warrant an amendment to the visa.

Failing to properly document and assess these changes could result in the visa holder losing their work authorization and potentially jeopardize the employer’s compliance with immigration regulations, including the risk of losing their ability to sponsor visas in the future.

Trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. It is the foundation of healthy relationships. And it is foundational to creating a workplace culture that supports high performing employees.

Employers, who choose to be transparent about their pay-related decisions and processes, have an advantage. They are better able to attract and retain talent. And their employees are more likely to be engaged and productive.

Pay transparency improves trust between employees and their employer.

For most employers, the pay and benefits provided to their employees is the largest expense. So, it makes sense that they spend a good amount of time making decisions about pay and benefits.

But some employers don’t. They have few pay decision making processes defined and don’t have grades, base pay ranges, or incentive targets defined for their jobs.

They have a haphazard mess of reward decisions that are based on “who asked for what” or favoritism and aren’t defendable. 

About 1 in 5 employees leave their employers because of the lack of growth opportunities. It is the leading cause of employee attrition and has been for the last decade.

What is the next natural step in your career?  Your manager should be able to answer that. And if they don’t have ideas, HR is the next place to go.

The reality is that careers are as unique as the employee on the journey. Sometimes you get a promotion.

Implementing compensation software is not easy.  In most projects you will find the following issues:

1) The employer’s job and employee data are not clean. Errors exist in reporting relationships, job titles, or grades. Or there is data missing in fields that are critical.

2) The time it takes to do the implementation extends beyond the initial estimate. Especially if the current compensation and HRIS team members must do their day jobs AND the project, it always takes longer than expected. And more time means a higher cost.

It is used to recognize and reward an employee for exceptional performance or behavior that is beyond the normal expectations of the employee’s job. Spot awards are given soon after the result or behavior, usually without pre-determined goals or set performance levels. They are intended as “in the moment” recognition or one-time rewards.

 When should a spot award be used?

• To recognize, reward and encourage exceptional performance

• To promote behavior that is consistently aligned with company’s values, culture, or strategy

What does it take to end a toxic relationship or commit to a job search? Pain. 

As human beings we like comfort. We don’t like to change things because if we do, we must deal with the pain of the transition to what is new.

For example, let’s say you dread going to work. You don’t like the work you do or maybe you don’t like the people you work with. You don’t trust your manager, the people around you are negative, you are being paid less than you deserve, no career path exists, or you don’t believe in your employer’s vision and leaders.

At the beginning of the year, HR/Compensation teams set goals to ensure their results support their employer’s goals. The list of HR goals will be long, and the internal resourcing associated with the goals will be lean.  That means that outside consultants or contractors will be hired to appropriately resource projects.

My team and I are looking for compensation projects to contribute to.  What type of work do we do?

• Market Aligned Pay Grades & Base Salary Ranges

• Market Pricing & Job Evaluation

A merit matrix is used is a tool that helps managers decide how much of a merit increase to give employees.

It is used by employers to provide guidance to managers about how much of a merit increase to provide to employees. The goal of the employer is to stay within their budget and provide higher performers with a higher increase than lower performers. And in some cases, the position in range or compa-ratio is used as well. 

In the image associated with this post, you will see the first alternative that is only performance based. It doesn’t consider the position in range. And it provides a merit increase range that the manager can choose from. You could also provide a single value for each performance rating instead of a range.

Adam Grant posted the following recently: “2/3 college students say "trying hard" should be a factor in their grades. 1/3 expect at least a B just for showing up.”

I had to read this twice because I was surprised. This isn’t good.  In the real world, you get paid for the results you deliver.  The justification for your role or headcount is primarily based on your results.

Your performance rating in the workplace shouldn’t be based primarily on your effort. Instead, it should be based on you delivering the outcomes your employer needs to be successful now and in the long-term.

When an employer decides to lay off employees, they are often trying to reduce expenses. You are a number on a spreadsheet. It is cold and calculated.

As the leaders decide how to communicate with the employees who are being laid off, they can choose to treat you like a number or a person.

If you are a number, you can’t login to your email. You are left wondering what happened.

In one of my first compensation jobs, I was handed a pager on the first day. I remember looking at it and thinking, “What comp emergencies are going to cause someone to page me?”

The culture at this workplace was to page co-workers if they didn’t pick up the phone when you called. Email wasn’t used heavily. And everything was an emergency.

Thankfully, I had internal clients that learned that I would respond more quickly if they sent me an email with context and their ask. Yes, I would pick up the phone if they called and I was available. If they left me a message, I would call them back within 24 hours.

How many duplicate job titles does your organization have—different titles for the same job? If that question made you cringe, you’re not alone.

Standardizing job titles and updating job descriptions might not sound glamorous, but it’s the backbone of an efficient job architecture. Here's why it matters:

If you aren’t spending the time training managers on how to talk about pay with employees, you aren’t getting the maximum value out of your labor expenses.

Employees have more information than ever before. They see salary ranges within job postings from your competitors. They can look at a variety of websites and find free pay data.  They talk to each other about what they are paid.

And then they ask your managers about their pay. Have you given your managers the tools and resources to talk confidently about how pay decisions are made?

We are quickly moving toward the end of the year. Your work-related performance will be evaluated and discussed by your manager, your manager’s peers, and your manager’s boss. 

While some employers have implemented continuous feedback processes, many others continue to use an annual performance evaluation approach.

Let’s shift to your personal life.

You are probably thinking about upcoming holidays.

WorldatWork announced they updated their CCP and GRP designations this week.  The number of exams went from ten to eight. The price is less. A couple of the courses were consolidated.

I have both designations, but when people ask me if they are necessary to be good at doing compensation work, my response is always, “No.”

What makes you good at compensation is having the experience of doing the work.  That means you need to work with a manager and peers who will teach you not only how to do the analysis work and research, but will also teach you the other essential skills like:

What if you aren’t creating a job architecture from scratch? Instead, you inherited one as a newly hired compensation leader. Now you must figure out if it needs to change and how to go about that. 

1st – Do a job architecture inventory. What is in place today for job families, career levels, pay grade structures, base pay ranges, target incentives, job titles, job descriptions, compensation philosophy, governance processes, comp guidelines, etc.?

2nd – How do each of these elements align to the business goals?

Employers are benchmarking jobs right now and establishing their 2025 base pay ranges and incentive targets for bonuses and sales commissions.

The salary survey data for the bonuses and commissions need to be reviewed carefully. Is the reported number in the salary survey an Actual incentive payout or is it the Target? What is the difference?

·        The Target is the number that the employer will typically pay when the employee achieves the metrics at 100% in the incentive plan.

In the incumbent weighted pay data, each employee is treated with equal weight. All employees and their pay contribute to the calculation of the job’s median, average, and other percentiles.

·        The downside to these calculations is that employers with a large portion of the employees in the data set influence the job’s reported statistics. And this heavy influence of the large employers may inflate the final statistics. Smaller employers are also not going to pay as much as large employers so you can see how incumbent weight data can be “off.”

·        Also, individual employee pay rates are impacted by what each employee brings to the job. Some employees have more skills, experience, or education than others. Employees also have different performance levels and that influences their pay. And constraints like internal pay policies/guidelines and internal equity are factors in individual employee pay decisions.

The French Fry Theory is the idea that you always have room to eat one more fry. It is easy to say yes to one more thing at work or to delegate something more to a team member.

In a world that moves fast and in workplaces that expect a lot from us, we can sometimes forget to slow down and pause. How much is a serving of French fries? How much work is beyond my capacity? What is nice to have vs. absolutely necessary?

As we get closer to the end of the year, pause, and list out the things you and your team are working on. What is reasonable? What can you eliminate?