How to Determine New Employees' Annual Bonuses

When to Give an Annual Bonus to a New Employee

Chances are, you have recently been tasked with the job of determining (or at least helping to determine) what your employees’ end-of-year bonuses should be. With your long-term employees, you've have had some historical practices, as well as a, hopefully, comprehensive performance review to rely on to help you. But what do you do with employees who haven’t been with the company for a full year, including those who may have joined very recently? While there are no hard and fast rules, here are some approaches for you to ponder.

Bullying in the Workplace: Information for Taking Action

How to Address Complaints of Bullying in the Workplace

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

Anderson Cooper of CNN created a special series on it. School kids suffer from it. And, HR leaders are on guard for it more than ever. Bullying has taken center stage as a major problem in the US. How do you, as a business leader, handle accusations of bullying at your organization?

Successful Multimedia Presentations

How to Create Multimedia Presentations that Connect with Your Audience

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

As an HR professional working in compensation, you not only have to know your labor market, understand your company goals, beware of pay inequity, retain top talent and develop pay for performance, you must be able to communicate all of your ideas to your executive team and the rest of the company. Does that last task sound daunting? Here is some help from an expert on engaging multimedia presentations.

How to Talk to Leaders and Employees About Compensation

How to Talk to Leaders and Employees About Compensation

Here on Compensation Today, I often encourage HR pros and business leaders to take more time with their compensation planning. And, with our PayScale clients, we carefully break down the process and go over every detail. But, then what? It’s then time to carefully communicate the results with the rest of the company. And, that process is often done too quickly. I believe that if we don’t spend as much time and energy communicating about our compensation system as we do with design and implementation, then it will almost certainly fail.

How to Avoid Pay Compression

Pay Compression: Our Nightmare in the World of Compensation

Compression is the ugliest issue compensation professionals face. It tends to be a no-win, lose-lose situation, and the ways to deal with it are limited.

HR View of “Horrible Bosses”

How to Handle “Horrible Bosses”

You may have seen the trailer for the upcoming big movie release “Horrible Bosses.” It features quite an all-star cast - Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jason Bateman, Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, and the list goes on - for a topic that hits home for many the average Joe. The movie takes things to an extreme – a plot to kill these so-called horrible bosses, but the frustration and dissatisfaction are feelings that all too many people can understand. As HR professionals, isn’t it our dream to live in a world where way less people can relate to this movie?

How to Identify Low Performance - Management Tips

Underwhelming: Sure Signs of Low Performance

How do you know if an employee isn’t reaching their goals, pulling their weight or just plain getting the job done? Identifying low performance can be tricky. And, training managers to do it is often challenging since every manager has their own personality and way of relating to their team. How can you simplify the task of identifying low performance and training others to do it well?

How to Organize Your Paperwork for HR

Spring Cleaning Your HR Department

Ahhh, springtime. The flowers start to bloom. There’s sunshine and warmer temperatures. And, of course, the tradition of spring cleaning. Spring cleaning is typically reserved for our homes. But, when we bring it into the workplace, it helps us create a more efficient work environment.

HR Audits: How to Make Them Easy

How to Approach an HR Audit

Why is it when the phrase “Human Resource Audit” is uttered, the first reaction of so many of us is pain? Perhaps this article will persuade you to an alternative response. HR audits can be an excellent exercise to undertake, especially when you first join an organization.

Managing Your Outsourced Employees

How to Manage Employees in a Partner Company

In the process of growing your business, you may one day sign a Master Service Agreement (MSA) with an outsourcing partner. There could be manufacturing, web design, content production or other skills that you don’t want to bother bringing in house. And, you may assume that you have laid out all of the details in the MSA so clearly that you’re assured success with this new partner. Is it that simple? Not likely.

Creating a Merit Matrix

How to Create a Merit Matrix

When is it time for your organization to allot its merit budget, how do you best support the decision makers? Consider creating a merit matrix. A merit matrix is a great tool that can easily summarize and boil down paragraphs of policy into a simple, quick-to-view and quick-to-use visual to produce better decisions.

How to Deal with Employee Emotions

How to Deal with Employee Emotions in the Workplace

How do you manage your workforce effectively so that you have the expectation of high performance while demonstrating your genuine compassion for an employee? While you may think that you want a little bit of both at all times – both compassion and pushing the employee - this “sweet spot” is not a balance. Compassion and motivation are not at opposite ends of the same spectrum. One does not need to be sacrificed for the sake of the other.

Employee Code of Conduct

Employee Code of Conduct – Definition and Design

I would define an employee code of conduct as a general guideline for workplace performance that enforces key work ethics and severely discourages unethical, immoral, or illegal behavior. A code of conduct can be either an introduction to the employee handbook or, in some cases, a completely separate document that is reviewed and signed at the time of hiring.

Confronting Difficult Employees

How to Have Tough Conversations with Employees

Your employee was twenty minutes late to their shift on Monday and now it’s Thursday and it’s 15 minutes after they were supposed to arrive. They’re not around. You like this employee and have enjoyed their contributions. How can you have a conversation with them that will get them back on track and in the company’s good graces? This is a moment where knowing how to communicate effectively with staff and confronting difficult employees can help you get your job done.

How to Use an Employee Performance Matrix

How to Make Bigger Salaries Mean Better Business

When your supervisors determine which employees will get pay increases and how much they deserve, they are making or breaking your business. How? By connecting performance to pay, or not, your managers tell your employees what sort of work ethic and attitude get rewarded at your company. How do you train them to deliver a consistent message across the company?

How to Run an Effective Meeting

7 Tips for Running Effective Meetings

As an HR professional or business leader, you’re likely in charge of a number of meetings every year. From explaining health benefits to reviewing the company’s financial health, running a successful meeting is a skill you need to have.

Setting Compensation Budgets

How to Play a Key Role in Setting Compensation Budgets

By Staff Writer

During PayScale’s recent webinar, titled, “How to Play a Key Role in Compensation Budgeting,” PayScale director of customer service and education, Stacey Carroll, MBA, SPHR and HR experts Frank A. Cania, SPHR and Betty Richardson, CCP, explain why, in today’s economy, smart compensation planning and budgeting is more important than ever.  And, they explain how you can bring that message to your company.

How to Calculate Employee Turnover

Costs of Employee Turnover - Part 2

In our first post on the costs of employee turnover, you learned why hanging onto your employees is important to the financial well-being of your organization, as long as those employees are a good fit.

In part 2, I will show you some twists and variables on those calculations that you must make to see the full picture that employee turnover in your organization is telling you. I will also cover a few of the many variables that can affect your turnover rate and affect how you choose to interpret results of your employee turnover calculations.

How to Explain Employees’ Total Compensation

Communicating Compensation Plans to Employees

How well do your employees understand your compensation plan and philosophy? Clearly communicating compensation plans to employees is worth the effort. It can lead to harder-working, more loyal and satisfied employees. “But it’s complicated!” you say. You’re right. Let’s talk about what your organization might do to make compensation plans more transparent to your employees.

How to Conduct a Compensation Analysis

How to Conduct a Compensation Analysis and Move Salary Ranges

In a previous post we reviewed why performing compensation analytics can provide value to an organization. In this next post on compensation analytics, we’ll look at how it is used to review salary ranges.

At many companies, the assumed answer to the question, “Do our compensation ranges need adjustment?” is usually, “Yes.” Compensation ranges are often adjusted every year to match industry trends and economic ups and downs.  But, is it really smart planning to assume that you need to adjust your salary ranges every year – no matter what? I suggest that a key to long-term success is stepping back and having a conversation as a company about, “Do we need to move our salary ranges this year?”

How to Design an Executive Compensation Policy

How to Design an Executive Compensation Policy

By Staff Writer

If your company is looking to bounce back from a drop in profits or handle a growth spurt, you may be in the market for fresh talent at your executive level. What’s the best way to approach salary negotiations during the executive hiring process?

How to Draft an Employee Manual

How to Draft an Employee Manual or Policy  Manual

When it comes to drafting an employee manual and a policy manual, many of you may ask, “Do I really need either of these documents?” Even more, there’s often confusion about what the difference is between the two types of manuals.

How to Get a Job in Human Resources

How to Get a Job in Human Resources

Finding a new job in human resources is easy!

Now that I’ve lured you into reading my latest blog, I can confidently state that I’m only kidding. If you have experienced the same HR job market as I did over the past year, you may even demand that I see my EAP for substance abuse testing. In my 15 years within human resources (with various job moves interspersed), I have never, ever seen anything like the current human resources job market and am amazed at how quickly and fundamentally I observed a change in the landscape.

How to Forecast Your Workforce

Putting Forecasting in Focus – Part 1: Workforce Forecasting Techniques

Making sure a new employee understands their benefits, or that discrepancies in pay are addressed, both rank high as crucial HR functions. But, according to Jaime Hale of the global consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide, there is one HR responsibility that tops all functions of an HR department: workforce planning. Hale describes it as “the most strategic work HR can do. It’s really the umbrella over all other services HR provides.”

How to Write a Compensation Plan

How to Write a Compensation Plan: Some Fundamentals During a Recession

Maybe as employers, we can get a little complacent about our compensation plans this year.

We’re all sitting in the catbird seat today. And maybe still will be next year.

Along the way, especially if the economy doesn’t improve, the only folks we’re really likely to lose are – who? Well, there’s a concern! It’s our outstanding employees who are the highest turnover risk – those who are keeping us successful during a recession.

So let’s discuss how to write a compensation plan, today, that will keep us in business for the long run. One that will encourage employee retention, maintain morale, limit employee turnover and keep us HR types on the CEO’s “nice” list. Here’s how: