Dealing with the specifics of compensation management can be a real logjam, especially if your organization isn’t using a system tailored to its specific needs. Whether it’s a large number of employees, a decentralized power structure, or ensuring top employees are compensated according to their performance, there are certain issues that can gum up the compensation process. Because of this, something that should take only a week or two can be stretched out to months, impacting productivity. The issue is likely with the system used to manage and administer compensation. Instead of offloading all of the work onto the compensation staff, you should try to find a compensation management system that does the work for you.
Many organizations still use Excel spreadsheets to organize data and plan compensation. Depending on the size and organizational structure of your organization, this setup may work fine. But after a certain point your organization will have developed to such a stage that spreadsheets are simply inadequate for the job you’re trying to perform. And while some of this can be mitigated with macros and other Excel wizardry, even that may not be enough.
The problem is that the comp department needs to organize the spreadsheet to match the organization of your organization and then get all of the relevant data together to get it to resemble something workable. And despite their best efforts, the human factor always comes into play: the more data that needs to be manually entered by hand, the larger the possibility for error becomes, further exacerbating problems.
With the right compensation management solution, all of these problems can be avoided. The right vendor will be able to customize an SaaS compensation solution so that it meets your organization’s size and structure perfectly – and can be upgraded later to fit whatever changes may come in the future. The necessary data can be entered by managers through a secure login on a web browser, which automatically updates it into the system. Compensation budgets, merit pools, and so on can all update in real time, removing the need for manual entry (and lowering the risk of error, saving your organization time and money).
Since the system is so intuitive and easy to use, lengthy training periods aren’t needed to get your employees up to speed with the new compensation management solution. With this, the compensation management process becomes fast and easy. This means less time spent on compensation administration and more time spent achieving your organization’s goals.
If the compensation process has become a dreaded undertaking in your organization, you might want to look into a more modern solution than Excel spreadsheets. Investing in a compensation management solution can save your organization headache, heartache, and most importantly time – time that can be spent on more productive tasks than sweating over spreadsheets trying to find simple errors. The right compensation management tool can work for you, removing stress and worry and freeing up time.