123
PART FOUR COMPENSATION AND TOTAL REWARDS
C H A P T E R
T T e n
Developing Compensation Plans
10
Lecture Outline
I. The Basic Factors in Determining Pay Rates
A. Aligning Total Rewards with Strategy
B. Equity and Its Impact on Pay Rates
C. Legal Considerations in Compensation
D. Union Influences on Compensation Decisions
E. Pay Policies
II. Job Evaluation Methods
A. What Is Job Evaluation?
B. Salary Surveys
C. Compensable Factors
D. Preparing for the Job Evaluation
E. Job Evaluation Methods: Ranking
F. Job Evaluation Methods: Job Classification
G. Job Evaluation Methods: Point Method
H. Computerized Job Evaluations
I. Wage Curves
J. Pay Grades
K. Rate Ranges and the Wage Structure
III. Pricing Managerial and Professional Jobs
A. Compensating Executives and Managers
B. What Determines Executive Pay?
C. Compensating Professional Employees
D. Improving Performance through HRIS
IV. Contemporary Topics in Compensation
A. Competency-Based Pay
B. Broadbanding
C. Comparable Worth
D. Diversity Counts
E. Board Oversight of Executive Pay
V. Employee Engagement Guide for Managers
A. Total Rewards Programs
B. Total Rewards and Employee Engagement
In Brief: Employing carefully
selected and trained employees is
not enough; they also must be
motivated to do their jobs. We will
see here that producing that
motivation requires putting in
place HR policies and practices
that provide the employee with
equitable and motivational wages,
and pay-for-performance plans.
The chapter discusses the factors
used in determining pay rates,
evaluating jobs, creating
competitive pay plans, proper job
pricing, and contemporary
compensation issues.
Interesting Issues: There is
tension between the concept of
providing employees with a
secure, stable income (which some
feel allows them the ability to be
entrepreneurial and take
appropriate risks for the
company), and the idea of linking
pay directly to performance.
Improved employee performance
must be linked to improved
organizational performance if
124
ANNOTATED OUTLINE
I. The Basic Factors in Determining Pay Rates
Employee compensation includes all forms of pay going to employees and
arising from their employment. It has two main components, direct financial
payments (wages, salaries, incentives, commissions, and bonuses) and
indirect financial payments (financial benefits like employer-paid insurance
and vacations).
A. Aligning Total Rewards with Strategy The compensation plan should
first advance the firm’s strategic aimsmanagement should produce an
aligned reward strategy. This means creating a total pay package that
produces the employee behaviors the firm needs to support and achieve
its competitive strategy.
B. Equity and Its Impact on Pay Rates
1. Equity Theory of Motivation Postulates that people are
strongly motivated to maintain a balance between what they
perceive as their contributions and their rewards. Equity theory
states that if a person perceives an inequity, a tension will
develop in the person’s mind, motivating the person to reduce
the tension and perceived inequity.
a. External equity refers to how a job’s pay rate in one
company compares to the job’s pay rate in other
2. Addressing Equity Issues Managers use salary surveys
(surveys of what other employers are paying) to monitor and
maintain external equity. They use job analysis and comparisons
of each job (“job evaluation”) to maintain internal equity. They
use performance appraisal and incentive pay to maintain
individual equity. In addition, they use communications,
grievance mechanisms, and employee participation to help
ensure that employees view the pay process as procedurally fair.
C. Legal Considerations in Compensation The Davis-Bacon Act lets the
secretary of labor set wage rates for laborers and mechanics employed
by contractors working for the federal government. The Walsh-Healey
Public Contract Act sets basic labor standards for employees working on
any government contract that amounts to more than $10,000. Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination against protected classes in
compensation.
126
ones, simply use a market-based approach. Doing so involves conducting
formal or informal salary surveys.
A. What Is Job Evaluation? Job evaluation is a formal and systematic
B. Salary Surveys Surveys of what others are paying play a big role in
pricing jobs. Employers use salary surveys in three ways. First, they use
survey data to price benchmark jobs. Benchmark jobs are the anchor
jobs around which they slot their other jobs. Second, managers typically
price some or all of their positions directly in the marketplace. Third,
surveys also collect data on benefits like insurance, sick leave, and
vacations for decisions regarding employee benefits.
1. Commercial, professional, and government salary surveys
2. Using the Internet to do compensation surveys A rapidly
expanding array of Internet-based options makes it easy for
anyone to access published compensation survey information.
C. Compensable Factors You can use two basic approaches to compare
the worth of several jobs. First, you can take an intuitive approach. As an
D. Preparing for the Job Evaluation Job evaluation is a judgmental
process and demands close cooperation among supervisors, HR
E. Job Evaluation Methods: Ranking The simplest job evaluation method
ranks each job relative to all other jobs, usually based on some overall
F. Job Evaluation Methods: Job Classification Is a simple, widely used
job evaluation method in which raters categorize jobs into groups; all the
jobs in each group are of roughly the same value for pay purposes.
G. Job Evaluation Methods: Point Method The point method’s overall aim
is to determine the degree to which the jobs you’re evaluating contain
128
D. Improving Performance through HRIS Payroll administration is one of
IV. Contemporary Topics in Compensation
A. Competency-Based Pay With competency- or skill-based pay, you
pay the employee for the skills and knowledge he or she is capable of
using rather than for the responsibilities or title of the job currently held.
B. Broadbanding Most firms end up with pay plans that slot jobs into
classes or grades, each with its own vertical pay rate range.
Broadbanding means collapsing salary grades into just a few wide levels
or bands, each of which contains a relatively wide range of jobs and pay
levels.
1. Pros and Cons The basic advantage is that broadbanding
injects greater flexibility into employee assignments. On the
C. Comparable Worth Refers to the requirement to pay men and women
equal wages for jobs that are of comparable (rather than strictly equal)
value to the employer. Thus, comparable worth may mean comparing
quite dissimilar jobs.
D. The Pay Gap Women in the United States earn only about 81% as
much as men.
E. Board Oversight of Executive Pay There are various reasons for
boards clamping down on executive pay. For one thing, the Sarbanes-
Oxley Act makes executives personally liable, under certain conditions,
for corporate financial oversight lapses.
V. Employee Engagement Guide for Managers
A. Total Rewards Programs Total rewards encompasses not only
compensation and benefits, but also personal and professional growth
opportunities and a motivating work environment.
B. Total Rewards and Employee Engagement If employee engagement
is the aim, it makes sense to emphasize total rewards, not just base pay.
Employers must also communicate to employees the existence and
value of nonfinancial rewards.
KEY TERMS
Employee compensation All forms of pay or rewards going to employees and arising from
their employment.
Copyright © 2019 Pearson Education, Inc
1011. Working individually or in groups, access relevant websites to determine what
equitable pay ranges are for these jobs: chemical engineer, marketing manager,
and HR manager, all with a bachelor’s degree and 5 years’ experience. Do so for
the following cities: New York, New York; San Francisco, California; Houston,
Texas; Denver, Colorado; Miami, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois;
Birmingham, Alabama; Detroit, Michigan; and Washington, DC. For each position
in each city, what are the pay ranges and the average pay? Does geography impact
the salaries of the different positions? If so, how? (LO 10.3: Explain how to price
1012. Some of America’s executives have come under fire because their pay seemed to
some to be excessive, given their firms’ performances. However, big institutional
investors are no longer sitting back and not complaining. For example, pension
manager for TIAA-CREF is talking to 50 companies about executive pay. Do you
think they are right to make a fuss? Why? (LO 10.4: Explain the difference between
1013. How do you think politicians in the United States should address the problem of
income inequality? (LO 10.4: Explain the difference between competency-based and
1014. For this activity, you will need the documents titled (1) “HRCI PHR® and SPHR®
Certification body of Knowledge” and (2) About the Society for Human Resource
Management (SHRM) Body of Competency and KnowledgeTM Model and
Certification Exams.” Your instructor can obtain these documents from the
Pearson Instructor Resource Center and pass them on to you. These documents
list the knowledge someone studying for the HRCI or SHRM certification exam
needs to have in each area of human resource management (such as in Strategic
134
Management, and Workforce Planning). In groups of several students, do four
things: (1) review the HRCI and/or SHRM documents; (2) identify the material in
this chapter that relates to the required knowledge the appendix lists; (3) write four
multiple-choice exam questions on this material that you believe would be suitable
for inclusion in the HRCI exam; and (4) if time permits, have someone from your
team post your team’s questions in front of the class, so the students in other
Students can find the following assisted-graded writing questions at
1015. Should the job evaluation depend on an appraisal of the jobholder’s performance?
Why? Why not? (LO 10.2: Define and give an example of how to conduct a job
1016. Do small companies need to develop a pay plan? Why or why not? (LO 10.1: List
HR in Action Case Incident 1: Salary Inequities at AstraZeneca
10-17. Although the case with OFCCP is closed, we wonder if there are any less
discriminatory explanations possible for why our women sales reps on average
earned less than men. If so, what are they? (LO 10.4: Explain the difference between
1018. Our company now uses a point method to evaluate jobs for pay purposes, and
each resulting job class also has a rate range associated with it. Sales associates
are now paid a salary, not based on incentive pay. List three specific things we can
do to ensure that a similar problem (inequitable pay based on gender) does not
10-19. What sort of compensation plan would you recommend for us, and why? (LO 10.1:
HR in Action Case Incident 2: Carter Cleaning Company: The New Pay Plan
APPLICATION EXERCISES
136
1. We saw that the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
accused Starbucks of breaking the law in trying to prevent workers in some of its New
2. The Kaiser Permanente Health System is often held out as an employer with very good
labor relations. What can you discern from websites such as
http://www.kaiserpermanentejobs.org/default.aspx that might explain such a
3. What does www.seiu.org/ tell you about this union’s aims and how they intend to
achieve them? The SEIU will continue to act strategically in recruiting areas of the
1. How can a business determine if a worker should be classified as an independent
contractor? (LO 10.1: List the basic factors determining pay rates.) The business should
2. Why is “comparable worth” an important concept in determining fair pay levels for
women? (LO 10.4: Explain the difference between competency-based and traditional pay
WEB-e’s (WEB EXERCISES)
ADDITIONAL ASSIGNMENTS