Chapter 8: Compensation

Matching Compensation with Core Values

As you sit down to review the compensation package your company offers, one thing that stands out is that your compensation package no longer matches the core values of your organization. When your organization merged five years ago with a similar firm that specializes in online shoe retailing, your company had to hire hundreds of people to keep up with growth. As a result—and what happens with many companies—the compensation plans are not revised and revisited as they should be. The core values your company adopted from the merging company focused on customer service, freedom to work where employees felt they could be most productive, and continuing education of employees, whether or not the education was related to the organization. The compensation package, providing the basic salary, health benefits, and retirement plan, seems a bit old-fashioned for the type of company yours has become.

After reviewing your company’s strategic plan and your human resource management (HRM) strategic plan, you begin to develop a compensation plan that includes salary, health benefits, and retirement plan, but you feel it might be smart to better meet the needs of your employees by making some changes to these existing plans. For example, you are considering implementing a team bonus program for high customer service ratings and coverage for alternative forms of medicine, such as acupuncture and massage. Instead of guessing what employees would like to see in their compensation packages, you decide to develop a compensation survey to assess what benefits are most important to your employees. As you begin this task, you know it will be a lot of work, but it’s important to the continued recruitment, retention, and motivation of your current employees.

So, what is compensation and how do you determine it?