Out-of-the-box thinking for designing merit matrices

Are you using a merit matrix for deciding salary increases for the employees in your company ? Then you are already familiar with the traditional “bands” or “ranges” of comparatio (basic pay compared to midpoint of the salary range associated with the grade of the employee – the position of the employee in the pay…

Case study – Give an out-of-cycle increase to my employee now!

Imagine the scene – you won’t have much problem doing so as I’m sure you have faced a similar situation in the past 🙂 : It’s August. The Head of Accounting calls you and theatrically announces : “There is something wrong in what you decided to pay my employee Hassan ! He is underpaid and…

All you need to know : from compensation surveys to salary ranges and salary review

Frances, one of my readers, recently commented to me as follows : I have to create salary ranges and compare the current salary to market data. This will allow me to make the determination if the person’s pay is within the acceptable range. Year-end is approaching and I am starting to get more questions around…

An interpretation of Seth Godin’s “The End of Should”

Seth Godin’s posts are notoriously short and to the point. The End of Should is a recent one that I thought Compensation and HR professionals could use : Banks should close at 4, books should be 200 pages long, CEOs should go to college, blogs should have comments, businessmen should be men, big deals should…

3 factors influencing the promotion rate for your organisation

As we got into salary review time or mid-year reviews, colleagues have asked me, almost every year, the same question about the promotion rate : “What is a reasonable benchmark for the number of employees to be promoted each year ?” Now, bear with me please because my answer is one that usually is not…

How are salary reviews done ?

How are salary reviews done ? Is it done organisation wide (i.e all staff at once) or based on performance and other parameters ? This is a question that HR professionals as well as line managers are likely to hear numerous times. Here is a general overview. Most companies do salary reviews for all employees…

Increase allowances, not basic pay ?

  “Why do some organisations only increase allowances not basic pay at salary review ?”. This question was asked recently on LinkedIn, and even though the person asking is based in India, I thought I would answer for my readers based in the GCC. Review of the allowances At the company level, most often, there…