Variable Incentive Plans: A Motivation & Retention tool

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: April 6th, 2010

Since the past two years Variable Incentives did not work very well since most employees wanted the security of a high base-pay and meeting targets was largely unpredictable. The economy is on an up-swing again and employers & employees see new opportunities for increasing incomes.

Organizations want to curtail their fixed costs, hence salaries may not increase dramatically and immediately, but Variable Incentive Plans are coming to the fore to retain high-performers and encourage achievement.

As soon as we think of Variable Incentives, our thought goes to the employees in the sales department, but in my recent research I have found that each employee, irrespective of their department can be included in the company Variable Incentive Plan. Although the goals, their relative importance and the expected achievements may vary across job roles. The rest of this article explores the various categories of Incentives that can be applied to employees in different job roles and how HR can use this tool to motivate and retain employees across the entire company. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Compensation Planning, Employee Rewards, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Payroll, Performance Management | 18 Comments »

ROI on automating the Payroll Function

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: January 6th, 2010

It is difficult to anticipate the benefits of taking your payroll online. This was a challenge faced by one of our recent customers where the HR department found it challenging to estimate the ROI derived from implementation of an integrated Payroll software.

This article describes some of the benefits analyzed and presented to the senior management such that critical purchase dollars were allocated for the procurement.

The exercise which started as a small initiative actually helped me dive deeper into how a CFO or CEO perceive their human resources department and what are their expectations from an HR platform.

What I will share here is a small part of the study in how organizations are managing their human capital assets and the challenges being faced versus what are the best practices. In this, I will share what are the different metrics and how can organizations save costs in this critical area.

Elements of ROI

To determine the ROI, we had to first understand how the payroll process works in a manual environment. Our interactions revealed that there are three distinct steps in the successful processing of a payroll which are:

1. Data gathering
2. Processing
3. Disbursement and Reporting Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Compensation Planning, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Payroll | 34 Comments »