As any strategist worth their salt will tell you, the secret to success is being prepared. And the secret to being prepared is being informed. You see, compensation planning isn’t so dissimilar from being a tactician as one may think. At the end of the day it all boils down to the same key principle: effectively managing available resources.
Depending on your organization’s structure and pay practices you’ll have a number of employees to account for and a specified budget with which to compensate them. Each of these employees, depending on their position, performance, or whatever other variables your organization uses, will need to be paid from that budget. Unfortunately compensation isn’t something with a neat solution, like a jigsaw puzzle, so there’s no exact rules as to how to go about it. With the right tools, though, you can make the endeavor a lot easier.
Take organization, for instance. A lot of compensation planning is done in spreadsheet programs like Excel, which serves its purpose well in a number of cases. But the more employees you have to account for, and the more complex or decentralized the organization is, the more tricky things become. And the more people you factor into the approval chain, the more gummed up things can get – which costs organizations both time and money.
If you’re at this point, administering compensation is like using an abacus to solve a problem which requires a graphing calculator. The tools you’re using are no longer useful in allowing you to see the whole picture, and thus effectively strategize. If any of this sounds familiar, it may be time to upgrade the tools you’re using in order to match the problems you need to solve. But then again, depending on your organization, there might not be a ready-made tool out there that can meet the needs of your organization.
So if there are no tools already out there to do what you need them to do, it might be time to get one custom-made. A compensation management solution which can incorporate your organization’s hierarchy no matter how decentralized it may be. A tool which can instantaneously alert each person in the approval chain so the compensation process doesn’t get mired down somewhere along the way. A tool that can update compensation and merit budgets in real time so you always know where you stand, and can more effectively consider various hypotheticals.
This kind of tool isn’t something that comes out of the box by some software giant. It comes from a team who can find out exactly what your organization’s needs are and create a system which can meet them. Like a strategist has a team of advisors helping them consider all sides of an issue. When issues become complicated you need all the information you can get in order to effectively plan your next move. And if you’re having trouble planning, your next move should be to invest in a compensation management system which can keep you – and your organization – up to date. If you would like more information on how Harvest HCM’s compensation strategies and tools work, sign up for some free in formation on our Contact Us page.