An Infographic is Worth a Thousand Words

We’d like to thank Mercer Consulting for putting together their 2011 Mercer’s What’s Working(TM) survey of 2,400 US employees. A really big thanks to our friends at TribeHR for taking the survey results and creating a visual representation of the data in the form of an infographic. Some of the key takeaways are: Benefits now …

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CandidateStatements.com Named a Top HR Product of the Year

Total Rewards Software, Inc., announced today its recruitment product CandidateStatements.com was named one of Human Resource Executive® magazine’s Top HR Products of 2011. The magazine, which was established in 1987, is the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR. Human Resource Executive® provides readers with news, profiles of HR visionaries and success stories of human resource …

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TotalRewards Software Receives Safe Harbor Certification through the U.S. Department of Commerce

To provide products and services  to an ever expanding range of clients, today we announced that we have received Safe Harbor Certification through the U.S. Department of Commerce.  The Safe Harbor designation recognizes U.S. based companies, who meet or exceed directives of the European Union for data privacy and protection. The Safe Harbor framework was created by the …

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Executive Overview Report: Promoting Total Compensation Value During Economic Uncertainty To Help Retain and Recruit Employees

Total compensation communication has been practiced in different forms for more than twenty years. The format used as the most effective to deliver this message has traditionally been personalized, total compensation statements. These statements have become even more popular recently to show total compensation value. Recent HR surveys show that the majority of employers interviewed do …

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Reporting – Another of the Critical Factors for a Successful Total Rewards Statement Project

Historically, one of the company stakeholder groups who have been left out of a total rewards statement project has been the executive team. Sure, they might have received a statement and had been consulted for the project’s budget approval but after that, generally nothing. This is huge mistake. For if you deliver Return On Investment …

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An Infographic is Worth a Thousand Words CandidateStatements.com Named a Top HR Product of the Year TotalRewards Software Receives Safe Harbor Certification through the U.S. Department of Commerce Executive Overview Report: Promoting Total Compensation Value During Economic Uncertainty To Help Retain and Recruit Employees Reporting – Another of the Critical Factors for a Successful Total Rewards Statement Project

Jan
06

An Infographic is Worth a Thousand Words

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by Ray O'Donnell

We’d like to thank Mercer Consulting for putting together their 2011 Mercer’s What’s Working(TM) survey of 2,400 US employees. A really big thanks to our friends at TribeHR for taking the survey results and creating a visual representation of the data in the form of an infographic. Some of the key takeaways are:

  • Benefits now play a greater role for employees in their decisions to join or stay with an organization
  • Fewer employees now rate their overall benefits program as good compared to five years ago
  • About the same number of workers say their benefits are as good as, or better than those offered by other organizations in their industry compared to five years ago
  • However, fewer employees now say that benefits provided by their organization meet their needs

These results are similar to what we have experienced with clients. There is a big disconnect between employees’ perception of their benefits and the monetary value of those benefits compared to the perception held by their employers. This “communication gap” needs to be bridged with better and more timely benefits communication and a willingness by employers to gather employee feedback and constructively act on that feedback. Enjoy the graphic!

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Oct
05

CandidateStatements.com Named a Top HR Product of the Year

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by Ray O'Donnell

Total Rewards Software, Inc., announced today its recruitment product CandidateStatements.com was named one of Human Resource Executive® magazine’s Top HR Products of 2011. The magazine, which was established in 1987, is the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR. Human Resource Executive® provides readers with news, profiles of HR visionaries and success stories of human resource innovators.

Selected from hundreds of entries, CandidateStatements.com was selected as a winner based on its innovation, value, and business benefits delivered to organizations looking to gain a competitive edge in the race for qualified candidates.

“We are truly honored to be recognized by Human Resource Executive® magazine as one of the best HR Products for 2011,” said Ray O’Donnell, founder and CEO of Total Rewards Software. “This award is a testament to our team’s vision of the product and its potential for helping employers win the race for qualified candidates. We remain committed to building CandidateStatements.com into a world-class application serving the needs of employers throughout North America and globally.”

The award was officially announced at the Human Resource Executive’s® HR Technology conference luncheon, which took place October 3, 2011, in Las Vegas.

Please visit the CandidateStatements.com website to learn more about this innovative recruitment product.

 

 

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Jul
07

TotalRewards Software Receives Safe Harbor Certification through the U.S. Department of Commerce

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by Ray O'Donnell

To provide products and services  to an ever expanding range of clients, today we announced that we have received Safe Harbor Certification through the U.S. Department of Commerce.  The Safe Harbor designation recognizes U.S. based companies, who meet or exceed directives of the European Union for data privacy and protection. The Safe Harbor framework was created by the U.S. Department of Commerce in consultation with the Europe Commission’s Directive on Data Protection to bridge differences in countries’ privacy approaches and provide a streamlined means for U.S. organizations to comply with data protection laws.

With clients on 4 continents and in 40 countries, we are truly a global provider of a cloud-based, total compensation statement publishing platform.

Click here to read the Safe Harbor Certification press release.

Click here for more information on the Safe Harbor and for a list of certified organizations.

 

 

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Jul
06

Executive Overview Report: Promoting Total Compensation Value During Economic Uncertainty To Help Retain and Recruit Employees

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by Ray O'Donnell

Total compensation communication has been practiced in different forms for more than twenty years. The format used as the most effective to deliver this message has traditionally been personalized, total compensation statements. These statements have become even more popular recently to show total compensation value. Recent HR surveys show that the majority of employers interviewed do not plan to increase salaries or provide bonus compensation this year.

As a result, your ability to provide a total compensation picture to reassure your employees about your company’s financial commitment to them has never been more attractive.  Also, by showing true compensation value, you can positively address the potential negative impact of salary and bonuses freezes.

Read Full Executive Overview Report

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Jun
24

Reporting – Another of the Critical Factors for a Successful Total Rewards Statement Project

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by Ray O'Donnell

Historically, one of the company stakeholder groups who have been left out of a total rewards statement project has been the executive team. Sure, they might have received a statement and had been consulted for the project’s budget approval but after that, generally nothing.

This is huge mistake.

For if you deliver Return On Investment (ROI) information to your executive team that shows data such as employee utilization (effective Promotion helps drive utilization), survey results and direct employee feedback – you quantity your business case for producing the statements in the first place. This “closed loop” involvement from green light to measurable ROI delivery proves the campaign was worth the roll-out initially, and ensures executive buy-in to produce statements in the future.

Another incredibly valuable byproduct of producing total rewards statements and the gathering of disparate data (cash, incentive pay, bonus, benefits, retirement, statutory, time-off, etc.) from disparate information systems (IS) and vendors is the ability to repurpose that data for upper management’s consumption. Imagine delivering a consolidated report, unlike any individual IS report that your executives receive that breaks down all cash and benefits programs tabulated by total, number of participants, percentage of participants and averaged by participant. See a sample below…

HR Report Sample

These reports can be prepared for your executives and even for your board members. This type of reporting helps HR’s cause by delivering strategic value in the eyes of upper management.

 

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Jun
21

If You Have An International Workforce, Should You Provide Total Rewards Statements?

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by Ray O'Donnell

We have been getting this question for years. However it seems only recently that employers are really excited about taking next steps. Over the past 6 months, several large, multi-national organizations are using our web-based platform to provide statements to employees in over 4 continents and 40 countries. While most are large (3,000+ employees), one is as few as 300 employees total in just over 4 countries.

We believe that employers are trying to define their compensation philosophy and that extends across the whole company worldwide. Additionally, often times, companies grow internationally through acquisition and consequently there is no unifying HR theme or consistent message. Total Rewards Statements provide an opportunity along with other HR messaging, to tie disparate, local level HR messaging about total compensation into a unifying theme.

Some multi-national clients require one administrative login portal for all countries while others simply need individual admin logins for each country. Regardless… by unifying all total rewards communications worldwide, this allows all employees to “speak the same total rewards language” and help global organizations maximize their total investment in human capital.

 

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Jun
13

Total Compensation Statements vs. A Cup of Coffee

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by Ray O'Donnell

Recently, the MetLife 9th Annual Survey was released to the public. It should definitely change some perceptions held by employers. It surveyed over 1,500 employers and 1,400 employees. If you haven’t gotten your hands on this survey, we highly recommend you do. You can download the full report here.

One of the findings in the report, is the basis for this parody video we created. It highlights the disconnect between what employers believe their employees think and what those employees actually think. Enjoy the video, and as always, please pass along your feedback.

 

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Jun
09

Education – Another of the Critical Factors for a Successful Total Rewards Statement Project

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by Ray O'Donnell

Education is a rather broad term… in our case, it is part Promotion (see my post from April 18th), and part support capabilities. You could argue that the total rewards statement in and of itself is educational and you would be correct.

However, we go beyond that… you need to educate your employees at the Promotion stage – both employee and managers (since invariably employees will go to their managers with questions or concerns). There needs to be a comprehensive messaging campaign (multi-touch if possible) to educate your workforce conceptually on the value of employee benefits, and the impact that value has on their total compensation. Also, a best practice would involve managers first, so they are made aware of the statements before distribution and the possible questions employees may have.

Further, any Frequently Asked Questions type format within the delivery of your statements can be extremely helpful as it answers employees’ questions “on the spot” before they reach out to HR. This cuts down on unnecessary calls into HR.

If you are presenting statements to employees say quarterly, the ability to add questions to the FAQ format would also be useful and helpful to employees.

All in all, effective education sets the proper tone so employees get the full meaning and understanding of the value of their total rewards.

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Jun
01

Look Back or Look Forward… that is the question (part 2)

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by Ray O'Donnell

As part of my previous post, I would like to now review the Pros and Cons of “looking forward” as the data capture period for your total rewards statement project. As mentioned previously, both of these methods have their share of proponents and opponents. My objective is to give you an unbiased professional opinion based on nearly twenty years working on these projects.

Look Forward Method (also referred to as Prospective View)

Pros:

  • All benefit-eligible employees receive an annualized statement showing full compensation and benefit values
  • Most employees think in terms of annual… “annual salary, annual pay,” etc. – so this fits nicely within that line of thinking
  • Employees hired recently or who have not yet been with the company a full 12 months will have an annualized view which in most cases is more relevant to them and to your message
  • Removes the “staleness” of your data as you can annualize all comp and benefits data as of say June 1 and rollout the project in July
  • If you have a platform-based solution or an in-house solution you can use again, you can re-purpose the message and statements for new hires as they come on-board. This is a great way to say “welcome to the team” and solidify their decision to choose your organization as the “employer of choice.” You will want to create and distribute the new hire statement once they have chosen their benefit elections for full impact.
  • Statements can be issued more than once a year with “re-freshed” data. This works best with an online statement solution due to the hard-costs associated with the print and fulfillment of hardcopy statements.

Cons:

  • Some industries where direct compensation has a disproportional amount of other compensation such as overtime, per diem or commissions might not be the best candidate for the look forward approach
  • These other compensation programs would either need to be annualized based on a set date or captured from the previous year. While I have seen it done successfully with the proper call-outs and footnotes, some companies are reluctant and for this reason choose the look back instead.
  • To the previous point, some companies are also reluctant to annualize retirement contributions since employees can change their contributions per pay period. This is not as much of a show stopper as the other compensation annualized issues.

 

Although the look back in more prevalent than the look forward, overall we are seeing a trend to the look forward or prospective view. If a company can get past the annualized pay and benefits considerations, in my opinion, this approach has more value. The traditional look back method provides a once a year conversation (usually 1st or 2nd quarter of the new year) about your employees’ total compensation or total rewards. With the look forward however, there is an opportunity to have that conversation several times a year and to different constituents – employees, new hires even prospective employees.

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May
03

Look Back or Look Forward… that is the question (part 1)

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by Ray O'Donnell

If you decide to promote the value of your employees’ total compensation using total rewards statements, one of the first planning questions you will need to decide is whether to “look back” to the previous calendar year and capture Year-To-Date (YTD) payroll, benefits and retirement data or “look forward” to the current and coming year (also referred to as prospective view).

Arguments can be made for either method as there are pros and cons with both. Here is a quick (certainly not exhaustive) list of pros and cons based on our experience for the look back method. Part 2 will contrast the look forward method in the next post.

Look Back Method

Pros:

  • No confusion because of annualizing your data since you are capturing YTD employee data
  • No need to annualize retirement data based on current contribution levels or amounts
  • Most data found within your payroll system
  • Following tradition — employees have usually received their statements during the 1st or 2nd quarter
  • Can be rolled out shortly after W2s are issued (although the pay data never syncs up exactly)
  • Fits nicely within the “once a year” statement mindset which has also been the tradition

Cons:

  • Data can become stale if rolled out too far into the new year
  • Employees often have a “what have you done for me lately mindset” and are not as motivated by previous year statements (especially those that roll out late – see bullet #1)
  • Employees hired within the previous year will need to have employer contributions pro-rated which can be tricky in some cases (example: employed for 6 months the previous year / health insurance has a 30 day waiting period / employee requires a coverage change from EE + 1 to EE + Family in month 4)
  • Employees hired within the last quarter of the previous year will only have 2-3 months of pay and benefits data so their statements might not resonate as intended
  • Employees hired after the 12/31 cutoff for data but before the rollout of the statements in Q1 or Q2 won’t even receive a statement since they weren’t employed during the previous year

The “look back” method of promoting total compensation has been the tradition for the last 30 years of preparing total compensation statements. However, if not rolled out shortly after the new year (ideally in Q1), a good return on investment for the project might not materialize.

I will compare the pros and cons of the “look forward” method with the next post. As always, we welcome your comments.    

 

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