Compensation and Market Focus: Salary and Benefits
Compensation encompasses the range of incentives that you use to attract, reward, and retain superior employees. Here you'll find up-to-date information about the competitive market for talent attraction and retention. The focus is also on components of your compensation package such as benefits, bonuses, profit sharing, retirement packages such as 401(k)s and pensions, executive compensation, and salary research. Individuals will find how to negotiate salary and maximize income potential.
- Compensation Strategies and Structure (10)
- Salary and Compensation Information (23)
- Variable Compensation (5)
- Standard Employee Benefits (51)
- How to Increase Compensation (4)
- Non-standard Benefits (37)
- Role of Salary and Benefits (9)
- Salary Negotiation (12)
- Salary Research (18)
- Salary Surveys (4)
- Executive Compensation (9)
- Retirement Plans: 401(k), SEP IRA, More (8)
- Employee Compensation Questions (2)
- Employee Safety (11)
Salary Trends for Forward Thinking Organizations
How to research salary, salary calculators, salary surveys, salary comparisons, basically, all things salary, online, is one of the most frequent requests for information received by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). This makes sense when you consider the importance of salary to attract talented people, retain key employees, and maintain an excited, motivated workforce.
Human Resources Job Prospects and Earnings
Many people are eager to start a career in Human Resources, as it is a fast-growing field with many lucrative opportunities. Career analysts expect the number of Human Resources jobs to increase in the projected future and the median annual income is above the national average. For these reasons and more, you are probably wondering how to start...
Tips for Determining a Motivating Salary
Information online makes researching salary ranges easier than setting salaries has ever been in the past - but, also trickier. The role of salary in helping you create a motivated, contributing work force is inestimable. These tips will help you address pay and salary issues in a way that contributes to employee motivation in your organization.
Cafeteria Plan Gives Employees Choices About Their Benefits
Looking for a way to customize your benefits plan to the needs of your individual employees? A cafeteria plan is an employee benefits plan that allows your employees to choose among a variety of options to create a benefits plan that best meets their needs and those of their family. In a cafeteria plan, an employee receives a certain number of...
Benefits
Benefits are a form of compensation paid by employers to employees over and above the amount of pay specified as a base salary or hourly rate of pay. Benefits are a portion of a total compensation package for employees. A comprehensive, common set of benefits includes the following components.
Salary Range - How Does a Salary Range Work?
Salary range is the range of pay that has been established to be paid to employees performing a particular job or function. Salary range generally has a minimum pay rate, a maximum pay rate, and a series of mid-range opportunities for pay increases. The salary range is determined by market pay rates, established through market pay studies, for people doing similar work in similar industries in t…
HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law that requires employers to protect employee medical records as confidential. HIPAA includes regulations that cover how employers must protect employees’ medical privacy rights and the privacy of their health information. Find out more about HIPAA.
COBRA
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) set forth regulations that give employees and their families, who lose their health benefits because of unemployment, the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan. These health care benefits may be extended for limited periods of time under certain circumstances according to the COBRA regulations.
Comp Time
Compensatory or comp time is time worked by an employee beyond their required number of work hours, often calculated at 40 for exempt employees. Comp time is calculated and recorded and employees expect some remuneration for the extra hours worked, most often paid as time off from work, or comp time which compensates for the extra hours worked...
Compensation
Compensation is the total amount of the monetary and non-monetary pay and benefits provided to an employee by an employer in return for work performed as required. Compensation is based on market research about the worth of similar jobs, employee contributions and accomplishments, and the availability of employees with like skills in the...
How to Select Human Resources Information Technology
HR information technology is essential for companies to manage their benefits plans and their employee information. Benefits management technology is no longer a “nice to have,” but a necessity to help HR manage. But how do HR and other executives know they are selecting the best HR information technology to manage all of the details, and that the solution they select will stand the test of time?
Labor and Compensation Issues
People work for many reasons including love, money, and creating a successful future. Celebrate Labor Day with our special resource about Labor Day, labor unions, compensation, salary, bonuses, benefits, and more.
Merit Pay
Merit pay is an approach to compensation that rewards the higher performing employees with additional pay or incentive pay. Merit pay has advantages and disadvantages for the employees and the employer. But, all-in-all, merit pay is the best way to reward the employees that you most want to keep. Find out more about why you might want to...
Paycheck
A paycheck is a check issued by an employer in order to satisfy the compensation commitment the employer has with the employee. The paycheck is most frequently issued by the employer, every two weeks, but some employers issue the paycheck weekly or monthly. The average employee receives 26 paychecks a year.
Profit Sharing
Profit sharing is an example of a variable pay plan. Profit sharing is taking a percentage of a company’s annual profits and then dividing the pool of money generated across all employees using a formula for distribution. Profit sharing payments are only made if the company has been profitable for the time period specified. Find out more about profit sharing.
Reward, Recognition, Award, and Thank You Ideas
Looking for convenient, appreciated, reasonably cost-conscious ways to reward, recognize, demonstrate your appreciation, award, and say "thank you" for contributions that people make at work? These ideas will help.
Sales Compensation: Retain Sales Super Stars
Keeping salespeople motivated can be a real challenge. What motivates one might not motivate another. Good sales managers know this and are always aware of where their individual salespeople are on that "motivational" scale. Sales compensation is a crucial factor in motivation. Learn more about keeping great salespeople with successful sales compensation.
Severance Pay
Severance pay is money that an employer might want to provide for an employee who is leaving their employ. Normal circumstances that might warrant severance pay include layoffs, job elimination, and mutual agreement to part ways for whatever reason. Severance pay usually amounts to a week or two of pay for each year of service to the company. In...
Sick Leave
Sick leave is paid time off from work that an organization voluntarily provides employees as a benefit. Sick leave is used when an employee is temporarily ill; some organizations also allow the use of sick leave to take care of ill family members. The amount of sick leave is often accrued by employees based on years of service to the...
Signing Bonus
A signing bonus is a lump sum of money that an employer provides a prospective employee. The purpose of the signing bonus is to entice the applicant to sign-on with the employer’s organization. The signing bonus is most often used with executive level positions or to recruit employees with special, hard-to-find skills. The signing bonus is also...
Variable Pay
Variable pay is used generally to recognize and reward employee contribution toward company productivity, profitability, team work, safety, quality, or some other metric deemed important. Variable pay changes depending upon the circumstances. Learn more about variable pay.
Holiday Pay Practices: Do You Know What Your Legal Requirements Are?
The end of the year is a good time to review your company’s holiday pay practices. This article answers common questions regarding holiday pay related issues.
The Impact of the Minimum Wage Increase
The increase in the minimum wage on July 24, 2007 from $5.15 to $5.85 an hour, is expected to have minimal impact on most employers nation-wide. That's because 32 states and the District of Columbia have already established minimum wage levels higher than the new federal level. The minimum wage will increase again to $6.55 on July 24, 2008, and to $7.25 per hour on July 24, 2009. It is the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade. Find out more about the minimum wage.
What Good People Really Cost
Losing a good person to another employer costs more than you might think. The About Guide to Management, John Reh, helps you consider the real cost of losing people.
Business Tax Guide and Information
This site from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service provides updated information on benefits, compensation, tax withholding, retirement funding, definitions of employees and contractual relationships, and more. Readable!
Development of a Salary Administration Plan
This article outlines all of the steps in the development of a complete salary administration plan including philosophy, job analysis, salary administration policy, and a communication plan for managers.
Severance Pay From D.O.L.
This is a handy guide to severance pay from the U.S. Department of Labor. The article offers links to other useful D.O.L. web pages about pensions, salary, and other compensation issues.
Social Security Administration
The Social Security Administration site provides information for employers about benefits, filing responsibilities, and more.