Hiring a Compensation and Benefits specialist brings a different skill set and a fresh perspective to your HR team. People in these roles are highly analytical with strong Excel, data management and reporting skills. What’s more, they can also save the business money. In this blog, we explore five benefits that a Compensation and Benefits (C&B) specialist brings.
Benefit 1 – Paying for Market Data More Than Pays for Itself
C&B specialists can’t operate effectively without the tools of the trade. If you don’t already have market data, investing in the right set will provide insight into your competitors’ reward tactics. This provides your specialist with the data to do their job effectively.
Want to know which employees should receive private medical insurance? Or need to understand whether low pay is causing high turnover in a particular role? Market data enables your C&B specialist to tell you.
The data will also help them advise on market competitive pay rates so you can attract and retain employees without over-spending.
Benefit 2 - Align Compensation and Benefits to HR and Business Goals
Your C&B specialist can also use the market data to establish a pay and benefits strategy that supports your business goals.
Aligning pay with desired performance and behaviours will deliver what the business needs whilst ensuring your best people are well rewarded. This can reduce regretful losses and retain valuable knowledge and skills.
Benefits programmes can also be used to enhance other elements of your business strategy. For example, if employee wellbeing is an important focus, introducing a cash plan is a cost-effective way to support wellness initiatives.
Whatever changes you choose to make, your C&B specialist will use their strong Excel skills to model different scenarios and predict the costs.
Benefit 3 - Take Away the Pain of Pay and Bonus Reviews
An experienced C&B specialist will take away the guessing game surrounding pay review budgets. They’ll conduct a thorough review of economic indicators and competitor pay budget data to establish what the competition is doing. This will be combined with an understanding of business performance so a sensible pay budget recommendation can be made.
It’s worth getting this decision right: if your total salary bill is £10m, a recommendation that’s 0.5% lower than you were considering would save £50,000 in salaries alone. Factor in additional costs like pension contributions and employer NI and that’s a significant saving. In fact, your C&B specialist would likely be cost-neutral that year.
With their strong data management skills, your C&B specialist would be able to take a firm grip of pay and bonus reviews. Helping to cleanse data and running the process from end to end with accurate reporting and approvals; everything will be taken care of.
Benefit 4 – You Remain on the Right Side of HMRC
Managing benefits is a headache for many organisations, particularly with the associated – and everchanging - tax requirements.
Take the recent changes to childcare vouchers. A C&B specialist would have been well-positioned to understand the changes, calculate the loss in employer NI savings, implement internal process change and communicate to employees.
While they are not tax experts, C&B specialists do have a good grasp of compensation and benefits-related HMRC regulations. They use this knowledge to identify where tax risk exists before investigating and recommending solutions.
A good example of a benefit where tax obligations are often overlooked is recognition schemes. Particularly in less formal schemes, cash or equivalent payments can be made to employees without the necessary tax being paid.
In this case, a C&B specialist can formalise the scheme and put controls in place to enable reward amounts to be captured and the relevant taxes paid.
Benefit 5 - Bring Order to Chaotic Terms and Conditions
If your business has grown through acquisitions, it’s likely you have a complex tangle of terms and conditions. A C&B specialist will analyse the relevant data to identify who has what, the associated costs and how the terms compare to market.
If things are out of hand, harmonisation can bring order to the chaos. This will allow the wider HR team to manage contracts, make offers and complete a range of other day-to-day activities more efficiently.
If you think a Compensation and Benefits specialist could make a difference to your organisation, contact Tricia at Halecroft Recruitment on 0161 905 0526 / 07721 953002 or at Tricia@halecroftrecruitment.co.uk
Guest blog by
Becky Hewson
Becky Hewson is an ex-C&B Specialist turned Copywriter. She has provided professional C&B advice to HR Directors across a range of organisations from global entities to smaller family-owned firms.