[Comp Alert October 2018] How to Develop a Compensation Strategy

Last June in our Compensation Alert, we discussed how to develop a compensation strategy. As year-end compensation planning approaches for many companies, we think this topic is timely and worth revisiting with updates to address current trends.

Compensation strategy is part of a company’s human resource strategy and should be integrated with all other elements of human resource planning. A compensation strategy—a formal, written statement capturing the organization’s views and approach to compensation—serves as a guide and touchstone when designing new HR programs or evaluating existing ones. In addition, a clear compensation strategy lays a foundation for communication transparency when giving employees the rationale behind pay and benefit decisions.

Compensation Strategy Planning Elements

Like every strategy guiding your business, your compensation strategy should align with your business priorities.

Here are six elements to guide you through the design process:

  1. Gather Information: Obtain information and perspectives from your stakeholders, including directors, executives, managers, employees and customers. Take a close look at external and internal factors having a direct and indirect impact on your pay strategy. External factors include trends in supply and demand for talent, your relationships with your customers and challenges you are having in the current marketplace. Internal factors include your company’s business culture, values and strategic initiatives, as well as the core competencies of your current and future employees.
  2. Business Lifecycle: Consider your organization’s business strategy and human resource strategy, as well as where your business may be in its lifecycle.
    • Inception Phase – At this stage cash is tight and organizational structures and systems are informal.
    • Growth Phase – Here cash is tied up in growth; often developing the HR infrastructure becomes critical during this stage.
    • Maturity Phase – Mature organizations have cash and organizational structures are in place.
  3. Consider Demographics: Early career employees may need different incentives than those further along in their work lives. For instance, entry level employees may be willing to accept lower base wages in exchange for larger cash incentives or professional development opportunities. Employees nearing retirement may be willing to trade some amount of pay for greater medical and retirement benefits.
  4. Benchmarking: Gather information on salaries and wages so you understand how your organization stacks up against competitors and where your pay is relative to market rates. This approach involves understanding an organization’s relative positioning, but not necessarily blindly following. It also considers the economics of the business, so you can decide what’s best for the organization.
  5. Test Initial Strategy: Develop an initial strategy statement, then share it for feedback from stakeholders. When evaluating your compensation strategy, make sure it is equitable, fair, fiscally sound, legally compliant and provides a framework to effectively communicate with employees.
  6. Revise as Needed: Once you have implemented your compensation strategy, monitor and evaluate its internal impact – pros and cons – making changes as warranted. In addition, adapt your strategy to changes in the external business environment while keeping its intrinsic value.

How Competitive Do You Need to Be?

Understanding competitiveness begins by defining the markets where your organization competes for talent and business. Does your company recruit talent on a local, regional, national or global basis? Gather relevant salary data so that you can adjust your compensation strategy based on geographic differences in pay. Some industries, occupations and job levels, too, may be more competitive than others.

Establishing a market competitiveness target is a key element of an organization’s compensation strategy. Does your company plan to pay at, above or below market for the jobs in your portfolio? Based on your analysis, you’ll need to decide if you want to lead, lag or match the market.

For example, if you are currently paying below market median, your reputation is solid, business is good, or talent is plentiful, you may want to continue that approach. But if you currently have great employees and recruit only the best, need skills in short supply, are in a less desirable geography or the cost of living is high, you may want to target above the market median. These and other considerations must be weighed when developing your salary structure.

What Should be Rewarded?

Your compensation strategy should be tailored to meet your organization’s unique needs and circumstances. Most compensation strategies include:

  • Base salary has an important role in compensating employees as it establishes ongoing job worth and reflects employee performance. When deciding how wide to make salary ranges, make sure there is a clear purpose for each segment in the range. Also consider how you expect employees to move through the salary range as they advance in the organization.
  • Annual incentives are meant to reward annual performance. Once you determine who will participate in the incentive program and what the incentive opportunity will be, set performance measures and a feedback schedule so everyone is on track. Include financial and performance measures for both the operating company and supporting business units.
  • Long-term incentives, in contrast, are meant to reward a longer performance cycle and typically are part of an executive compensation program. The timeframe for these incentives is typically two-to-five years. Reward systems establish forward-looking performance conditions and include cash and equity.

What motivates employees can differ greatly, so use a mix of rewards.

In Summary

How your company spends its compensation dollars – often an employer’s largest expense – deserves a strategic plan aligned with business goals. In today’s rapidly changing employment environment, it’s time to leverage the most important asset your organization has: its people.

Contact Us

Please contact me at nlappley@lapppley.com or (847) 864-8979 to discuss any comments or questions you may have about how to develop a compensation strategy. Feel free to forward this email to anyone else who may be interested.

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[Comp Alert August 2018] 2019 Salary Budget Increases

For the first time in four years, the national U.S. salary budget increase average is higher than 3%, nudging up slightly to 3.1% for 2018. This also is the first time when the actual salary increase has met the previous year’s projection. Further, U.S. salary budgets are projected to reach 3.2% in 2019.

Capturing information from 19 countries and 5,499 survey submissions, the annual survey of rewards professionals by WorldatWork finds that variable pay programs, such as performance-based bonuses and other incentive plans, remain the most popular in the U.S.

The chart below shows actual and projected salary budget information for the U.S. broken down by employment category.

Why Aren’t Salaries Rising?

So, with a national unemployment rate of 3.9%, new higher minimum wages in many municipalities, federal tax cut stimulus and rising corporate profits, why haven’t we seen more robust wage growth? Hiring gains have been steady with an unprecedented run of 94 straight months. In fact, the U.S. labor market added 157,000 new jobs in July. May and June employment gains were revised upwards to 213,000 and 248,000, respectively. May’s 3.8% unemployment rate was the lowest since 2000.

Yet, average earnings rose only 2.7% on a year-over-year basis.

There appears to be no easy answer to why salaries haven’t tracked with inflation. Rather, it appears to be a combination of factors hindering employers’ willingness to fund larger increases. We note, however, that from past experience employers typically take one to two years to adapt to upswings in the inflation rate.

Two Markets that Are Heating Up

Counter to overall salary trends, wages are rising rapidly in the recovering retail sector, however. Low unemployment has made hiring difficult in this segment of the economy, boosting wages. According to data gathered by job website Glassdoor, retail cashiers’ wages in July grew by 5.4% to $28,145 from a year earlier. Consulting firm Korn Ferry, in a separate study, found nearly one-third of retail corporate executives received at least 100% of their targeted bonus, more than double the 15% reported during the same period last year.

In some areas of the country, such as Wisconsin, wage growth is outpacing national trends. In May, for example, the average private sector wage in Wisconsin increased 6.4% over the same period in 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In comparison, the country’s wage change was 3.1% for the same timeframe.

Wages gains apparently are not a one-month phenomena, either. Wisconsin averaged a year-over-year increase of 5.7% in the first five months of 2018, compared to 2.7% for the U.S. The region also averaged an increase of 4.1% for both 2016 and 2017, outpacing U.S. wage growth both years.

What’s Ahead

In the increasingly tight labor market, employers must closely monitor labor markets to remain competitive and deploy cost-effective reward strategies that effectively attract and engage talent. We encourage employers to review their compensation strategy statement for their competitive pay target, then determine if they are tracking at the targeted level of competitiveness.

Please contact me at (847) 921-2812 or nlappley@lappley.com if you would like to discuss further. Also, feel free to share this article with anyone who might be interested.

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[Comp Alert May 2018] Tax Reform’s Impact on Compensation

Late last year, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The sweeping tax reform law reduces the marginal corporate tax rate at the federal level from 35 percent to 21 percent. This and other changes to tax law are boosting profits and will save businesses billions in taxes this year. So, how are they spending all that money?

Most companies are reinvesting their tax savings in strategic ways that drive business performance. So far, shareholders are reaping the greatest rewards, according to an analysis by investor Paul Tudor Jones’ Just Capital. Job creation is the second largest area for investment with 20 percent allocated. Jones’ nonprofit is tracking spending by companies in the Russell 1000; 133 companies have announced their intentions to date.

In addition, a recent Ernst & Young (EY) survey finds most employers are either planning to or have already made changes to enhance compensation through bonuses, salary increases and other pay benefits. Seventy three percent of companies surveyed expect to accelerate mergers and acquisitions.

Considering these and other trends, now is a good time to revisit your business compensation strategy to take advantage of opportunities that effect employee pay. Before making any long-term decisions, however, let your company’s business goals be your guide so that tax savings are invested where they will do the most good.

Making Tax Reform Pay

Tax cuts have contributed to growing optimism about the U.S. business outlook. And that optimism has translated into a strong economy.

Still, companies must be nimble to adapt to changes in the new tax law. Making the right strategic moves on where to invest tax savings requires thoughtful planning. Here are a few areas to consider:

1. Equal Pay – As more people keep a close eye on the pay gap, employers everywhere are working to eliminate wage discrimination based on sex, race, age, disability and other classes protected by federal laws. In this environment, they are evaluating how they can structure their compensation system so that it works for all employees. This means developing policies and compensation strategies that reward people performing well in the same jobs with similar work experiences, skills and education equally.

Yet, implementing changes means choosing a structure that pays internal employees fairly and is competitive externally. Consider using a portion of the tax break to identify any anomalies in your compensation structure. Then, develop solutions to pay disparity that can be implemented in phases over a reasonable time-period, as budget allows.

2. Shareholder Return – Shareholders who have invested in your organization expect a fair return. You can pass along tax savings to shareholders with an increase in dividends. This can take the form of a one-time payment or an increase in the quarterly rate. Another option: share buybacks.

3. Business Expansion – Companies who want to expand geographically, diversify product offerings or tap into new customers may choose to invest their tax savings in a merger or acquisition. With M&As, compensation programs must also be merged. Make sure your compensation strategy includes these important elements:

  • Competitive Pay Analysis – As the market for top talent gets tighter, attracting and retaining employees gets more challenging. This may be a good time to revisit the competitiveness goal defined in your organization’s overall compensation strategy. Consider using the tax reduction to fill in pay gaps. Look at national, regional and local market trends. Increases may be either to the entire organization or to select segments where compensation has increased faster than overall market wages.
  • Base Salary – The annual salary measures ongoing job worth and ongoing job performance. Under the TCJA, the performance-based compensation exception to executives $1 million pay cap has been eliminated. Now, compensation for the CEO, CFO and the three other highest paid executives is capped at $1 million regardless of whether compensation is performance-based or not.
  • Annual Incentives or Bonus Plans – These reward executives for reaching annual milestones or other incentivized, short-term financial goals. Cash is still the dominate incentive for private companies. Be sure to set goals for profitability or revenue growth as key performance measures. In January hundreds of companies announced employee bonuses resulting from the tax reform law. Although the pace of these announcements has slowed, more and more companies are following the national bonus pay trend.
  • Long-Term Incentives – This incentive rewards executives who create long-term value, a win-win for all when strategic objectives are met. You will also want to specify the length of the performance period, eligibility requirements, incentive opportunities, performance measures, and the payout or holdback schedule.

Whether your business is small and closely held or ranks in the Fortune 500, the new tax law will have wide-ranging implications for your compensation plans in 2018 and beyond. Please contact me at (847) 921-2812 or nlappley@lappley.com if you would like to discuss further. Also, feel free to share this article with anyone who might be interested.

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