Compensation Consulting

Why do your people show up at work?
What turns them on or off?
Is the investment in your people really improving results?

All businesses - whether traditional companies, cool millennial businesses, entrepreneurial organizations, professional firms, service-based businesses or sales-oriented cultures – often forget to build or refresh the basic infrastructure of their compensation programs on a regular basis. This is borne sometimes out of neglect, time constraints, other priorities or lack of desire to even have an infrastructure in the first place!

Some of the unique themes we have observed and experienced include:

  1. We pay our people what we need to in order to get them on board… and we pay them really well.
  2. Our reward program is oriented towards long-term equity, so the rest of it really doesn’t matter.
  3. We are an employee-owned company and treat all of our people fairly equally.
  4. We are a sales culture – and pay our people when the revenue is produced… pennies raining down on their desk.
  5. We are entrepreneurs… we are flexible and adaptable to market conditions…
  6. We have a salary structure and a pay-for-performance merit increase program… We adjust everything once a year. But we really haven’t changed our approach to compensation in a decade.

No matter the theme (all of the above are laudable), there is a basic need in business to ensure that the compensation programs are not only competitive, but also fair. Once we take our eye off of both the balls of the external forces in the market and the internal relationships, we stand the risk that while we might please some employees, we may alienate others. And, we may create risk of turnover and the loss of talent, intellectual capital and institutional knowledge.

At FutureSense, we believe that fundamentals of good compensation design include review of:

  1. Business strategy. The overarching strategies that are driving your business plans. How can we respond to challenging economic times and to your fluid shifts in strategy to respond to local, market, and world conditions?
  2. Compensation philosophy. The driving themes that guide the development of your programs. What is the mix of compensation elements in your company?
  3. Organization design. Roles, responsibilities, relationships and results that define the value of a position. How do you optimally structure your business?
  4. Salary management. Building the boundaries of competitive levels of pay (your salary structure). What you are willing and able to pay your positions. What is competitive and equitable?
  5. Performance management. Expectations and personal development. What is in it for your people? How can they grow and become better and more valuable? How are you communicating their personal challenge to them – does it engage and motive? Or is it a once a year exercise in
  6. Incentive opportunities. Changing behavior and driving action and results. What floats their boat and melts their butter? How do we find the balance between short-term and long-term results?
  7. Benefits. Meeting the health, welfare and capital accumulation (aka retirement) needs of employees. What connects with your people?
  8. Communications. What messages are being sent to your people by the design of our programs? Is it consistent with your mission, vision and values?

We take a holistic and strategic view when we discover what’s working and what’s not, when we design new or revised programs and when we deliver and implement new or revised compensation programs to our clients. We want to ensure that all components are considered with appropriate weight and context to help attract, develop, engage, motivate and retain human capital.