Keeping Great Employees Satisfied Involves More Than Just Paying Them Well

Keeping great employees on board is often as difficult as finding them. The best and the brightest almost invariably come to understand how important they are to their organizations, and this knowledge can have them looking eagerly for better opportunities elsewhere. Of course, few companies can afford to meet every pay demand without question or resistance, so looking for other ways to keep key employees satisfied is an important goal for most.

One underused way of doing so is to help executives and other important employees better understand just how their compensation packages work. Particularly in the higher ranks, contemporary pay schemes can be surprisingly complicated, incorporating a complex mixture of incentives and bonuses that can be hard for even the smartest and most diligent employees to disentangle in useful ways.

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A few third parties have tried to tackle this problem, some with impressive effect. One company, for example, offers a service called the executive pay survey that seeks to show executives and other key employees just how their compensation arrangements will work for them in practice. These total reward statements, many have found, can produce the kind of greater understanding among employees that can improve morale and boost workplace satisfaction.

As one total rewards statement example, for instance, consider the problem of comparing a pay package that is heavy in complicated incentives to a simpler one offered elsewhere in the industry. The latter might easily look more attractive even to highly skilled, confident executives, because the true value of the former can be much more difficult to assess.

A statement of just how that more complex package would pay out under typical conditions, then, can be a very useful way of showing just how generous it is. Other helpful total rewards statements examples might include those that compare given pay packages up and down an organization’s executive ladder, so that higher placed leaders can more easily understand how the company recognizes their value relative to those of lower rank.

There are a number of ways in which clarifying employee pay can be a real asset for companies that take advantage of the opportunity, then. In fact, given the expenses that highly ranked business leaders incur on their organizations, it only makes sense to ensure that these expenditures are appreciated and have the desired effects. For a relatively small investment compared to the pay itself, businesses can ensure that the money they spend on their employees will not be wasted.

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