Don’t forget to download PayScale’s 2013 Compensation Best Practices Report.  It’s worth a read. Click here. 

Demystifying Employee Compensation

If there’s one thing that’s hard in the world of HR and human capital, it’s compensation. Things like pay bands, raises and determining an employee’s hourly wage feel alot like banging your head up against a brick wall. No one’s ever happy especially the employee.  Don’t get me started on the manager who won’t approve a 3% merit increase across the board especially when your staff are dropping like flies to the new salary and perks offered by the competition.

This alone is one of the reasons myself or my staff regularly apply and interview for a job with industry or job competitors to help stop the bleeding. Doing so helps me plan my benefit communication and overall retention strategy especially when it comes to my most important and linchpin employees. And that’s all well and good except when the competition ends up stealing away one of your personal employment shopper employees. And I mean my HR Generalist who I sent in to do a little interview and hiring recon for me. Four weeks later she was handing in her own resignation to join the enemy. Even so, this strategy proved me well more times than not and was one of my essential rogue recruiting tactics I swore by even still today.

Employment Retention Strategies That Stick

PayScale breaks down some amazing statistics in their 2013 Compensation Best Practices report that is available for free download by clicking here. Because the best offense is a good defense and that means arming yourself with knowledge about industry trends and location compensation best practices. But first, their inforgraphic which is included below really speaks to me. Of course, I break down the trends for you in the bulleted section below.

• Retention is a common area of contention with hiring managers and companies with 59% of them admitting that the mere idea of retention and how to keep employees employed and engaged at their company is keeping them up at night. And this number is triple from 20% in 2010. 

• We’ve probably heard about the skills gap at one time or another this year. It’s the new buzz word in human capital in 2013. While 67% of companies are having a hard time filling positions because of specific skills related to the job, industries like oil and gas or construction are the top industries most impacted.
• While skills and training are important factors in tackling the skills gap, seems like money talks as the top solution to retain your employees with 85% of companies planning on giving merit increases to staff in 2013. I like this trend especially since the compensation train didn’t leave the station from 2008-2012 it seemed. I just hope that employers realize while money matters, learning opportunities and promotions are nearly as important to the employee.