Is your organization ready to start looking for salary administration software? A software solution can tremendously speed up the salary administration process. It’s important, however, to find the solution that can manage your organization’s compensation structure. Here are some of the key features to look for when considering salary administration software.
First, how does the software automate various pay programs? Depending on how complicated your organization’s pay structure is, you may need to find a system which can incorporate a variety of different programs. Some of the necessary basics, though, are things like merit increases and bonuses. Stock, equity, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives are also incredibly important items which the software should be able to incorporate. Finally, pay adjustment and promotions should be easily handled within the system.
As well as complex pay structures, a good salary administration program should also be able to manage organizational structures. Different groups of employees should be easily organizable, for starters. Depending on how different classes of employees are compensated, the system should also be able to accommodate different pay structures for each class of employee, and be able to manage different times of year in which the employees may be compensated. When making adjustments to an employee’s compensation, the totals in regards to the merit/compensation budget should update automatically to reflect these changes.
You may also want the system to be able to produce total rewards statements. In the case of total rewards statements, you’ll need the system to incorporate the various aspects of your organization’s total rewards program (healthcare, paid vacation, retirement packages, etc). To get total rewards information you will need to have a feed from your other systems that capture total rewards data. At the most basic level the system should be able to automatically create compensation statements, detailing to the employee what increases have happened. You will need to work with each vendor to see how much the compensation statements can be customized. Many times vendors will have a standard compensation statement and any customization outside of a logo change is an additional cost.
The most important feature of any salary administration program, after you’ve determined that it can handle your organization’s merit and comp structures, is its ease of use. Since the reason you’re looking for a software solution in the first place is to simplify a complicated process, the last thing you want to have to deal with is a complicated and unintuitive program. Especially since you might need to have managers input salary data on their direct reports, you don’t want to confuse them with a new and complex program they’ll have to learn. For the most part your managers will only be logging into the salary administration software once or twice per year; you don’t want to retrain the managers each year on how to use the system.
The key to finding the right salary administration solution is understanding both the needs of your organization and the needs of the individuals who will be using the software. Ideally this program will have a good blend between robust features and an intuitive, easy-to-use layout. Take the time to go through product demonstrations with vendors, and ask them for other customers of theirs you can contact to see how the system is working for them.
If you would like to contact us at Harvest HCM to set up a demonstration, or if you have any further questions, you can contact us here.