Compensation Virtual Workshops

Join us for an overview of the Institute for Human Resources - Compensation Best Practices and Trends. The Institute launched on February 14 with a two-day virtual event, followed by a second on June 6/7. Learn about the program offered for this third installment, including the new webcasts being presented.

You will be provided with an overview of the certification program offered by the Institute, as well as how to maximize the benefit of attending both days. The program will include 16, one-hour educational webcasts, a virtual exhibit hall as well as networking lounge.

Join us for an overview of the Institute for Human Resources - Compensation Best Practices and Trends. The Institute launched on February 14 with a two-day virtual event, followed by a second on June 6/7. Learn about the program offered for this third installment, including the new webcasts being presented.

You will be provided with an overview of the certification program offered by the Institute, as well as how to maximize the benefit of attending both days. The program will include 16, one-hour educational webcasts, a virtual exhibit hall as well as networking lounge.

The P90X program is very intense and requires a level of personal commitment from the individual. It is not easy, but those who complete the program seem to overwhelmingly recommend it. There are a few keys to the success of this system that can be applied to any variable compensation program.

1. Ensure that people are “ready” for the program. Prior to starting P90X you are asked a series of questions and put through a regimen of tests that must be passed at a minimum level before you are allowed to start the actual program. Make sure that you take the time and effort to ensure that staff members understand the program and are fully prepared and equipped to attain the goals.
2. Show varying levels of achievement. Each session has three or four individuals performing the exercises at different difficulty levels or simple variations that keep you from getting bored. The easiest examples are realistic, but challenging. The most difficult levels are unlikely to ever be met by anyone but those in the very best of shape. They provide a goal regardless of the level of the participant.
3. Give people some room to fail. The instructor constantly reminds that you can stop and rest at any time. The goal is to complete the entire program, not to make a big splash on the first couple of days. You are given room to learn and grow, while being constantly motivated to join back in and achieve. Autonomy must work hand in hand with safety. In the end, people must be held accountable, but as they learn the process they must be allowed wiggle room to find their own way.
4. Make milestones and deadlines clear. A secret to the success of the program is the clock counting down for each day’s session. Some sessions are 15 minutes. Some are 90 minutes. Most make you want to stop long before the time is up, but seeing the clock counting down reminds you that there is a clear end to the process. This allows you to push through when you can and take short breaks when you have to. Seldom do you find yourself stopping in the middle (or beginning, or just prior to the end). People need to know how far they need to go and how close they are to the goal.
5. Track progress and measure success. Throughout the P90X programs you are reminded to write down the number of repetitions and amount of weight used for key exercises. This process allows you to quickly see progress over time. It’s very difficult to measure success if there is no clear starting line and no understanding of the path taken to reach the finish.
6. Make it easy to access. The P90X program can be run on your computer, ipad, television and more. Some hotels even have the disks available in their workout centers. When you want to work you can. More important there is never a good excuse NOT to work.
7. Build a habit. The workout program is nearly an every day affair. The nutrition program provides guidance for every meal for three months. This consistency helps build a habit. The habit of practice helps build confidence and skills. Make your performance pay a first thought, rather than a second thought. Let it drive actions and strategy.
8. Measure BEFORE and AFTER. You are encouraged to weigh yourself and take measurements of legs, arms, and more before you even get started. You are also encouraged to take a "before" picture. At the end of the process you repeat these measurements and pictures. It might not feel like you have accomplished much, but the evidence will prove that you have changed. You need to document your organization without aligned goals and performance management. As you progress you need to measure, record and communicate your organization with properly aligned, focused and managing performance.
9. Stay Engaged. Throughout the workout Tony Horton reminds you to stay engaged. He is referring to both your body and mind. Keep your abs tight, stay focused on technique. Engagement is a key component of any successful compensation program. We often forget that most people need constant reminders of how and why to stay engaged. This is not something that most people do without help. Compensation plans and the professionals who design and manage them should include regular reminders in the process.
10. COACH! COACH! COACH! The instructor provides guidance to the people watching on TV and to those doing the exercises on the video. This makes it clear that even the best occasionally need instruction. It also allows you to adjust your own technique on a real-time basis. Instead of waiting until after the program to provide a critique, the frequent reminders increase the speed of improvement and reduce the impact of doing something wrong.

Economic conditions continue to be fluid, but there is some positive sentiment in the area of compensation and human resources administration. Companies are budgeting for merit increases and structure movements, and are beginning to reenter the pay for performance arena, realizing that compensation dollars can be well spent by motivating employees to achieve the strategic plan. Learn the latest reactions by companies relative to merit increase projections for 2012. Join us as we examine Compensation Resources, Inc.’s latest survey results on how companies will handle merit increases next year. Also learn how year-end bonuses and incentives are shifting in today's economy. Lastly, we'll share insights on what companies should be doing to best position their compensation structures for 2012 with an eye towards growth, from a research and best practices standpoint.

Participants will be provided with useful information and up-to-date survey findings in the areas of merit increase projects, structure movement, personnel actions, eligibility and participation in short-term and long-term incentive plans, and the changing mix of the compensation package between fixed and variable pay. Participants will walk away with critical information that they can use to update and manage their compensation processes for 2012 and beyond.

“How to Guarantee the Best Talent Chooses Your Company” will explain how the traditional recruiting process ignores what candidates are looking for when they choose their next employer. Even in an “employer’s market” there are some skill sets that are hard to find and harder to move. This session will focus on how you get those candidates, that are as rare as purple squirrels, to imagine your enterprise as their next career berth. And we will explain how your understanding of what compensation means to this candidate pool ultimately results in acceptance or rejection by the talent you have fought so hard to find.

Most employers do not access the variety of compensation currencies available to them. So many companies miss the point and the boat when going after the talent they need. If your organization thinks in terms of base, incentives and benefits, you are not in sync with the candidate pool in the second decade of the 21st century.

What do the purple squirrels want? What will make them move their loyalty to your company and solve your customer’s problems?

This session will help your enterprise become an employer of choice by learning about the following:

• Understanding the criteria used by knowledge-based candidates for choosing their next employer
• Identifying all of the “currencies” available to you to entice the candidate
• How to figure out which of those currencies matter to the candidate
• Using social networking as an affiliation engine, rather than an association engine
• Examples of best practices that have been used successfully at multiple companies

A recent survey of global business leaders reveals that 80% of companies fail to convert strategy to execution. The reasons range from poor communication of goals to the lack of IT solutions capable of providing the actionable data to bridge the strategy to execution gap. Oftentimes the process can be directly traced back to decisions regarding tactical behavior. Since “people will do what you pay them to do, as long as they understand what is expected” and “alignment begins at the top,” this presentation will examine a key component often missing to enable a company to link strategy to execution effectively.

In the “new normal” staff reductions have turned into “permanent” downsizings and the pressure to do more work without consuming more resources is mounting. How will your overall talent management strategy be affected? And what about the omnipresent “War for Talent?”

Find out what the future holds for enterprise compensation. Is Integrated Talent Management (ICM), also known as Total Compensation Planning a myth or reality? Can it be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant? How will Best Practices and technology-as-an-enabler contribute to solving these and other problems in a world where the only way to get from strategy to outcome is through people?

Once this capability is harnessed, value is created, breakthrough performance becomes reality and success can be measured via the corporate Balanced Scorecard or any performance management system and ultimately footed to financial statements.

Sign up for this session and learn how to use ICM or Total Compensation as the alignment mechanism that leads to better management of human assets.

Summary:

A national medical device distributor had a very complex commission process. The complexity comes from a variety of factors - by making it easy for their customers, it makes the process difficult to administer. Their sales technology system simply can’t handle the complexity and all the commission exceptions. So the accounting staff was forced to use some very large and cumbersome spreadsheets to manually track the sales transactions to pay their sales commissions correctly. We fixed it. Their commission process that took weeks to complete every month was turned into a half hour process. They can now send out sales reports weekly, instead of monthly. We show how using Excel with VBA can automate any time-intensive process.

Project Description:

A privately held company specializes in the supply of durable medical equipment to patients through surgical centers and hospitals across the United States. They operate nationally through independent regional sales organizations, and each region hires its own sales representatives. These sales reps handle all the billing paperwork and inventory to minimize or eliminate any time needed by the surgical center staff. By making it easy for their customers, it makes the process difficult to administer.

The reporting and commissions complexity comes from a variety of factors:
•       Some surgical centers may have more than one sales rep
•       Some reps distribute only certain products
•       Sometimes an independent rep will work for both the regional and the corporate organization
•       Multiple customer types – DVT, Billing, Corporate, Urology
•       Multiple commission rates
•       Many “guaranteed” commission rates
•       The need to track Principals and States for reporting, which are not fields in their system
•       New facilities are added monthly
•       Reps change frequently
•       Data inconsistency in their system, and missing data

So, the accounting staff was forced to use some very large and cumbersome spreadsheets to manipulate the sales transactions to pay their sales commissions correctly. After they got the sales reps straightened out, they had to apply their commission and multiple exceptions with commission rates to the sales. It took a lot of staff time.

We fixed it. The commission process that took weeks to complete every month was turned into a half hour process. They can now send out sales reports weekly, instead of monthly. We are developing a tool that will integrate Purchase Order data with their sales and inventory systems to accelerate billing and reduce inventory shrinkage. This will help them reduce cost and increase profitability, while giving our customers a better value. The process is being turned over to a clerk, instead of requiring more senior accounting staff.

In building the tool:
•       Brightree remains the system of record – no changes needed or required to system
•       We used existing reports - Doctor’s file, Facilities report, AR file
•       We delivered a completely custom solution, developed to the client’s exact specifications
•       Workflow to support the client process
•       No change to current procedures, although process re-engineering is easily achieved if so desired

A process that took two weeks has been reduced to a half hour. The tool:
•       Reads and processes 80,000 Accounts Receivable file records in about 12 minutes
•       Creates all 31 commission reports, and summary commission report in about three minutes
•       Creates all month end reports in about two minutes
•       Creates all weekly sales reports in three minutes

Key Messages:
1.       All these tasks needed to be accomplished, and they were automated with Excel and VBA.
2.       Your staff time is transformed from administrative duties to Value Added functions.
3.       Your day doesn’t have to be consumed with paperwork or repetitive spreadsheets.

Companies have increasingly used variable pay programs to incent employees’ performance. However, in a recent report employees state that base pay is more important to them than variable pay (Mercer, WorldatWorld Conference 2011.) In another study, 80% of companies report “poor” communication for Total Rewards with 50% of their employees categorized as “disengaged.” (AON Hewitt, WorldatWorld Conference 2011.) In contrast, when employees “strongly feel” communication is effective, 77% of employees state they are satisfied with their job, and 78% are loyal to their employer (MetLife 8th Annual Survey 2010.) Managing the mix of pay elements in employee’s Total Rewards as well as its communication can have significant, positive impact on employee engagement, voluntary attrition and the profitability of employees.

This session will provide a review of current pay practices and their impact on employee retention – with examples of how prominent companies are moving back to focus on base pay programs. We will also discuss a framework for Total Rewards communication that is personalized, flexible and holistic. We will also cover current best practices in Total Rewards and communication for managing talent. We will review two in-depth case studies that use online tools to provide a year-round, single source of integrated information that is personalized for the employee as well as provide modeling of incentive payouts.

HR.com attendees will receive tools to evaluate their compensation pay mix, to create effective Total Rewards communication programs, and to manage the implementation of the projects. Attention and investment in Total Rewards is critical to the strategic management of talent in today’s organizations.

Is the recession over? It may be, but many economic indicators point to more economic turbulence ahead. As a result, your organization will likely start to examine expenses again and put all spending under the microscope.

If you have not had a conversation recently with your CFO, chances are they are thinking: "Uncertainty or economic instability means trouble for sales. So we need to manage our expenses. How can we cut costs, maximize our budgets and find savings while keeping productivity high?" Compensation is one of your CFO’s biggest areas of expense. Salary increases, which have been hard to come by, often appear to be a good place to start when times are tight.

Led by David B. Turetsky, a talent management and compensation expert with ADP, this session will look at five key areas of focus for cost control that are often overlooked when reviewing compensation program spend. Mr. Turetsky will examine each of these ideas in the context of their potential impact to various stakeholders across your organization, including: employees, managers, your CFO, and shareholders.

In the end, you may be able to provide the CFO with some ideas of areas for cost savings, productivity improvements, and a better chance for higher shareholder return on their investment, while supporting your managers and employees along the way. What you learn may just be the win-win that can save your bonus and enable your organization’s employees to get their increases this year.

A successful sales compensation program motivates your organization and drives performance toward your most important business objectives. However, the sales compensation plan doesn’t operate in isolation. Its success depends upon its alignment with the organization’s sales strategy and sales roles. These pressure points between the “upstream” sales roles and the “downstream” incentive plan can either enable the flow from strategy to motivation or kill a seemingly good plan.

In this session, Mark Donnolo discusses these pressure points – the top issues companies face with incentive plan alignment – and approaches to apply the right practices to your business. Key learning areas include:

• Following Your Revenue Roadmap. Sales compensation can enable (or disable) business performance through its alignments with upstream disciplines such as sales strategy, segmentation, sales roles, and sales process. Is your sales compensation plan fuse popping because of a sales alignment issue?

• Articulating C-Level Objectives. Understand the true north for your business to make sure the plan is pointing in the right direction. What is your CXO thinking and how can you respond?

• The Sales Strategy Pressure Points. Each sales role is created to fulfill a certain sales strategy. What strategy points should be represented in the incentive plan?

• The Sales Process Pressure Points. The pay plan drives action, or inaction, in the sales process. How should the plan represent your desired sales process?

• The Quota Pressure Points. Quotas and goals are the lynchpin between the plan and performance and critical to each sales role. How can you make sure your quotas represent your roles?

• The People and Change Pressure Points. How you change the plan can determine how well it will be adopted and ultimately how the organization will perform. How can you plan your change process for the people in the roles?

Join Mark for this informative discussion and take away some concepts and tools you can apply immediately to take advantage of the pressure points and get clear alignment to your strategy and roles.

You just sat through the vendor demo and can’t find your socks, because they just got knocked off. The application was able to calculate all your complex commissions and could do recoverable draws exactly as they are executed in your contracts. Not only that, but the reports, oh the reports! The dashboards were incredible; your sales organization and finance department will look at you with adoration. Before you stake your reputation on a fancy demo you should perform a thorough selection process.

When deciding which Sales Performance Management (SPM) software vendor to use, Canidium suggests focusing on the following items:

- Identify if the features demonstrated truly meet your business needs
- Differentiate your wish list from your needs
- Determine which items really drive hard dollar ROI
- Envision what the implementation will look like
- Decide if you should do a pilot

All of these stages are crucial to making an informed decision. During this session we will walk you through a sample plan for accomplishing your goals and will review a traditional timeline.

If you are looking at an SPM system or are currently doing an evaluation, this session will help you learn which ROI drivers to consider, will help you determine how to apply them to your situation, and will teach you how to see past the vendor nod and flashy demos. We will also show you how to differentiate between the parts of the demo that really impact your business and the parts that are highly configured or customized, which may not scale to your company’s size.

The application of technology to business problems is both a dynamic and poorly understood process. This session will provide a framework for determining the key success factors prior to committing company resources. It will include description of best practices for identifying and selecting technology, integrating it with business processes, project justification and prudent considerations in change management to help ensure successful deployment and use. In addition, this session will provide input on the integration of HRIS and complimentary HR software and how HR professionals can increase the efficiency and productivity of their work through technology driven HR applications.

All too often organizations struggle to answer some basic, yet critically important questions related to the allocation of compensation. Are we making the most effective use of our compensation budgets? Are we rewarding the best performers accordingly? Are our compensation programs, policies, and rules being adhered to across the organization? Can HR and compensation professionals provide the best and most applicable information available to our managers as they make these important compensation decisions? And finally, can HR and compensation leaders supply information and insight around compensation programs and practices to the C-suite?

Add to those concerns the impact of the continued economic malaise in many parts of the global economy that has created conditions where organizations have even more pressure to strategically leverage compensation funds. It has never been more important and more urgent to make the best decisions around compensation. Additionally, employees need to understand how their contribution to organizational success is reflected in compensation decisions, and to understand the true value of their overall compensation treatment, a key factor in fostering continued engagement and commitment. The right application of technology can help organizations manage these complex and pressing compensation needs, and turn the compensation function from merely administrative to essential.

In its next generation of Human Capital Management applications, Oracle has developed a leading compensation management tool, one that provides both HR and Compensation professionals with the capability, ease of use, and access to rich analytical information to allow organizations to make the best business decisions with their compensation resources. Make the best use of that 3% pool by connecting rewards with performance, setting and enforcing business and compensation rules, and putting information exactly where it needs to be used in making compensation decisions.

As most of the companies are now evolving into knowledge organizations, hiring and retaining the right people has become the single most critical factor for organizational success. Further, compensation costs now constitute the single largest cost, amounting to as much as 60% of the total costs, at many organizations. Compensation thus must be viewed as a strategic tool to transform organizations, including an opportunity to save millions of dollars through strategic optimization.

Salary surveys, by providing market pricing information, are one of the key tools to achieve these objectives. Although most organizations use salary surveys in some way to assess or manage compensation levels, our experience indicates that most managers are not aware of the pitfalls and opportunities in using the data for building strong compensation plans at operational and strategic levels. It is not fully recognized that many salary surveys suffer from poor data quality or may not be appropriate to use for certain markets or jobs. At the same time, certain surveys can provide valuable information not only about market pricing but also about job structure design and labor distribution among various job levels. Salary surveys can also be used to determine the adequacy of internal equity structure.

The seminar will focus on practical techniques on how to assess survey data quality, how to select the right surveys and how to use the survey data properly. Properly used, salary surveys can be used to develop a strategic compensation structure that is likely to save millions of dollars, build the right workforce and gain competitive advantage.

The participants will learn:

- Role of salary surveys in market pricing and job structures

- How to select the salary surveys that are right for your organization

- How to know if the survey data is of high quality

- How to properly use the survey data

- Advanced concepts in the use of salary surveys

- How to use salary surveys as a strategic compensation tool beyond simple market pricing

The presentation will focus on introducing new concepts but it will be customized to the skill level of the attendees.

Salary structures can be critical in managing pay throughout an organization. In this session, Kenexa’s compensation experts will provide an overview of best practices for developing externally competitive and internally equitable salary structures. Join us to learn how to:

- Design salary structures
- Align pay grades based on current compensation strategy and workforce
- Make updates to structures and grades and analyze changes
- Analyze costs associated with salary structures
- Create various “what if” scenarios for planning and comparison

This session will be important for HR and compensation professionals looking for an overview of best practices for salary structure design. Individuals with a basic understanding of market pricing and compensation management will benefit most from this session.

This session will cover the use of variable pay in various regions and countries around the world as well as trends given the "new normal" for compensation. The session will include both a look at local practices around the world as well as how corporate compensation might handle these differences in crafting a global variable pay strategy.

Issues to be discussed will include:

- Difference in definition between "pay for performance" and "variable pay" between the U.S. and the rest of the world
- Types of plans that are included in the definition of variable pay
- How government mandated programs may/may not affect the use of variable pay plans
- The impact of bargaining units/works councils (unions) on variable pay plans
- Local labor laws to be aware of
- Local market practice of these plans
- Cultural risk tolerance in setting variable pay targets as a percentage of total cash compensation
- Differences in target levels of variable pay between mature and emerging markets/countries
- Importance in crafting a strategy for plans at the local level (line of sight)
- Use of individual versus group variable pay plans
- Importance of culture in development and implementation
- Importance of communicating the difference between variable pay plans versus fixed bonus plans prevalent in many countries
- Emerging trends

This session is relevant for VP’s or Directors of HR as well as Compensation Managers that have responsibility for developing and managing global compensation plans for countries outside the U.S.

Although the various issues presented will only skim the surface, participants will have a basic understanding of what they need to research more thoroughly before putting plans in place.

This webcast is certified for 1.0 International HRCI credits
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