There comes a time in the growth of your business where you need to make important decisions that can potentially make or break your overall success in the coming years. These big decisions need to be thoughtfully and carefully planned out. You wouldn’t want to implement a new program or hire new people that will only support your business for a short time. You do want to make decisions that will be beneficial for your company now and three years from now.
One of those often overlooked but desperately important decisions are the choice of using a compensation software program or continuing to handle your own compensation management plan. Compensation is one of those parts of owning a business that no one is ever really excited to do, and it’s not something that is planned very far ahead in when creating a new company. It’s just one of those necessary elements of owning a business and managing your employees that need to get done. But when exactly is the right time to make the switch from overseeing your own compensation plan to purchasing a compensation management system?
Well, there are a few key benchmarks that will signal your need for compensation help. I am going to discuss just a few of them here; including, acquiring a high number of employees, spending too much time fixing errors, not knowing spreadsheet software, and hating compensation management. Each of these points in time of owning a business is key indicators that you need to search for a compensation management solution, specifically a compensation management software.
If you don’t know that much about compensation…
If
you are anything like me, you love a good DIY. Doing things yourself supposedly
saves time, money, and the hassle of finding the right product for you. Why not
just do the work yourself and customize it to exactly what you want it to be….
Well, I think we all know that it almost never turns out that way.
Creating a compensation plan
from scratch is a lot of work that requires a lot of background knowledge on
the ins and outs of compensation to create. When you or one of your employees
is not an expert on compensation or doesn’t know the latest tricks to save time
and energy, your run of the mill spreadsheet programs simply will not do the
trick. You need something or someone with a more advanced knowledge base to
handle your compensation.
Harvest HCM is that something and someone. At our company, we provide an individualized compensation software program based on your exact needs as a company. Basically, it’s the DIY that you don’t actually have to do yourself! Additionally, we have an excellent customer service team that is always there to answer any of your compensation questions. We will be your source of knowledge, so you can focus on the many other aspects of running a business.
If you are approaching 1k employees…
So, it’s likely that even if you have very little knowledge of compensation and have been able to manage your compensation plan on your own for quite a while. But, know that you are starting to encroach on 1,000 employees, it’s probably getting too much to handle. You are opening new departments, hiring multiple levels of management, and your employees are working their way up the pay scale. The more people that you have onboard and the longer that your business has been open, the more difficult it is to properly manage your compensation plan.
Hitting 1,000 employees is a great time to look into compensation software and even performance management software. When you use Harvest HCM’s program, we work with your existing HR management system to integrate software that is perfect for your employees. This way, you can easily navigate between your growing employee stats, compensation planning tools, and total rewards statements with an individualized plan perfect for you, your employees, and your company.
If you spend too much time fixing errors…
When you began researching compensation plans, there is no doubt that you realized that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan. It probably spent your weeks’ worth of time to finalize a plan that would work for all your different types of employers… just the first time around. This realization probably hit, again and again, every single time you had to adjust a specific part of your plan or go in and fix the errors that came up with you were using a pre-designed spreadsheet or even a homemade spreadsheet.
When you are typing in numbers to a spreadsheet, no one wants to admit it, but it’s not an easy thing to get right! And, if you mess up one little number in the formula you are using or the numbers you input, it could throw off your entire budget. You might end up spending hours trying to find the one little mistake that you made in hour 7 of inputting all of the various compensation information.
Compensation management software is completely customizable to your exact needs. Here at Harvest HCM we are configured to your needs. We work with you so the product fits into your company, not the other way around. With us, you are guaranteed an error-free compensation management solution that satisfies all of your compensation needs, and you don’t have to do any of the work!
If you dread the comp planning season…
You might actually be really good at compensation. You may have created a compensation plan that has worked for the growth of your business, be able to manage any errors made and adapted your plan as your company changes. But what if you just really dread doing this?
It’s okay to search for help, even if you know how to do something! This is something that is hard for a lot of business owners to do. A lot of once-small business are used to handling everything themselves, and once their company gets so big that they do this, they become so overwhelmed and can’t enjoy running their business anymore!
This is another perfect entry point into purchasing a compensation software solution. Harvest HCM can take one of the many loads off of your shoulders and manage this part of your business for you. Without the extra dread of the compensation planning season, your schedule is freed up to work on what YOU want. Have you thought of adding a new department? Creating a new product? Offering a new service? Do it! Once you start using compensation management software, we will adapt to your growing business, and you can focus on what you do best.
These are just a few of the reasons you might need to start looking into a compensation management solution. To sum it up, if you are struggling in one area of your business, delegate one of your major responsibilities. Using compensation software is simpler and cheaper than hiring a compensation manager (as discussed here), and we will work hard so you can work less.