Building Salary Budgets and Merit Matrixes In Todays Economy

• OVERVIEW

It’s a fact of life that most people have to work for money. Even people who love their jobs likely would not perform them free. 

To a company, the salary budget is its biggest expense. To employees, it is a reward system for their work performed in your company and for the skills they bring to the workplace. It is also communicating to your employees what sort of work ethic, skills, and attitude are rewarded at your company. So, when a company determines how salary rewards administration is structured, including wage rates and for what and how employees will be rewarded, those decisions are critical “make or break” decisions. 

Today, every company is a performance-based company and as such needs to learn how to use what salary budgets it has for maximum effect on employee performance while still ensuring equity within internal and external components and avoiding compliance problems. 

•  LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Compensation is a reward system. Changing the mindset of pay and taking the mystery out of pay.
• Basic elements of a salary system.
• Internal equity, external equity and individual performance. 
• Current salary structures - Understanding how the numbers got that way and what it means now.
• Building modern salary budgets and matrixes.
•  Using what money you have (no matter how little) for increases in a more effective way - offsetting the effects of salary compression while rewarding higher performers.

• WHY SHOULD YOU ATTEND

When your supervisors determine which employees will get pay increases and how much they deserve, they are making or breaking your business. How? By connecting performance to pay, or not, your managers tell your employees what sort of work ethic, skills, and attitude get rewarded at your company. 

If you are not already using Merit Based Compensation, you may want to consider creating a merit-based performance matrix (MBM). The merit-based, pay-for-performance matrix serves as a guide for supervisors so that they suggest pay increases that are fair and support business objectives. The merit matrix connects performance to market rate pay.

The benefit of your extra effort regarding compensation is that you can drive your funds towards rewarding high-performing employees and send the right messages regarding what your company really rewards.  

• AREAS COVERED

• Connecting performance with pay. 
• Merit budgeting. 
• Using a limited merit increase budget most efficiently.
• What is variable pay.
• How to use variable pay in conjunction with your existing salary system.  
• How salary compression and salary inversion happen and what you can do. 
• How an automatic Cost of Living Increase (COLA) nowadays is akin to the idea of Santa Claus. Nice but not real.
• How small or mid-sized businesses can have more flexibility with pay.  
• How explaining how salary ranges are determined and increases awarded can help an employer operationally - not only at increase time but also year round.
• Mistakes that can blindside an employer compliance wise.

• WHO WILL BENEFIT?

• HR Managers
• HR Generalists
• Business Owners and CEO's
• Plant Managers
• Management Personnel
• Compensation Professionals
• Benefit Professionals
• CFOs