Including rewards information in all public job offers (expected salary or salary range), submitting pay transparency reports to the government, and making these reports available online or posting them prominently in each workplace are some of the measures included in the Pay Transparency Act. Proposed in Ontario in 2019, its eventual passage could influence other provincial governments to follow suit. If that were to happen, would you be prepared?
A Contemporary Reality
Let us not be fooled; rewards information is already flowing. With one click, it is possible to find salary information on sites such as Neuvoo, Indeed, PayScale, Glassdoor or LinkedIn Salary. Even more directly, “cafeteria discussions” also exist and can just as easily lead to dissatisfaction and frustration within your teams. It then becomes clear that structuring and communicating your salary determination process is essential in order to disseminate the right information and thus prevent your employees from forming an unfavorable opinion of themselves.
Easy Tools to Develop
In order to adequately communicate certain information about salaries, it is important that your approach be clear. As such, it is essential to put in place certain basic tools.
- FORMALIZE YOUR SALARY POLICY: Your policy must help avoid arbitrariness and misunderstandings by identifying the components that you favour in your overall rewards package and by clarifying the rules that govern them, such as: the choice of your market positioning, the standards for determining your salary upon hiring, the criteria for salary progression, as well as the tools used.
- CREATE SALARY STRUCTURES AND UPDATE THEM PERIODICALLY: Allows you to keep your salaries competitive in your market.
- IMPLEMENT A FORMAL JOB EVALUATION SYSTEM: Allows you to rank the existing positions in your organization in terms of their relative value.
- DEFINE A SALARY PROGRESSION MECHANISM: Depending on your environment, a progression linked to service accumulation or a method based on performance criteria could be implemented. The latter would require creating a performance evaluation tool combining performance and current salary position in order to define individual salary progression.
« If your employees are aware of the components and mechanisms of your total rewards
package and understand its application, then they should have a better perception of
fairness, greater trust in their employer and you should see a significant reduction in
frustration related to this taboo subject. »
Lussier’s team of rewards experts is at your disposal to establish with you the implementation plan for better communication of your rewards policies and practices.
