What Is a Compensation Plan? A Step-by-Step Guide

You want to attract the top talent out there to help your business succeed. They can help contribute to overall business growth and increase profitability. A compensation plan is a great way to highlight the value of compensation an employee receives working for your company.

It’s a complete package that has specific details related to an employee’s hourly rate or annual salary, any benefits they receive and the terms of payment. It can also include extra details that outline any bonuses, commissions or incentives that an employee can receive. You can even include the date of scheduled raises or increased bonuses.

Employees can not only see the compensation that they receive from your company, but they can also understand how much you value them.

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

What Is a Compensation Plan?

How Does a Compensation Plan Work?

Key Takeaways

What Is a Compensation Plan?

An employee compensation plan describes the way that you pay and compensate your employees. The plans can help you to attract highly qualified candidates and retain them for years to come. They can also allow you to stay competitive within your industry when it comes to pay, incentives and benefit opportunities.

A well-designed compensation strategy can contribute to other areas of your business, as well. It can support other components like your strategic plan and any budgeting or business goals. You can also better identify any operating needs by being able to see exactly how much is getting compensated.

But, a compensation package is a way to show the value that your company can offer an employee who works for you.

How Does a Compensation Plan Work?

It’s important to think about what’s most important for your business when developing a form of the compensation plan. You want to do what’s right for you and your employees. Here is a set-by-step guide to help you get started.

Start With an Outline

What is your overall objective? Do you have any targets you want to hit? Think about how many employees your business has or will need. And which of those positions are most essential to your operations.

You can then create job descriptions for each position that you need. Highlight the main tasks and responsibilities and clearly outline the job function.

Determine Compensation

After you have determined the number of employees and their job descriptions, you can figure out their compensation. Take into account wages and salary, bonuses and commissions. You can also factor in any possibility of overtime work.

This will get you started with figuring out a budget for what you need to attract top talent. You can stay competitive in the job market with the best market rates for compensation offerings.

Determine Any Benefits and Incentives

Similar to salary and bonuses, you can now also determine any benefits or extra incentives employees can have access to. Things like health insurance, dental care or vision care. And, some employers offer extra perks like gym memberships.

You don’t want to go too crazy, but you can put some thought into incentives that you think might motivate your employees to increase company performance. For example, if an employee reaches their monthly sales targets then they might receive a bonus payment or commission rate.

Organize All of the Details

Now that you have figured out all of the information that you are going to include in your compensation plan, you can organize all the details. Outline and highlight the different areas of compensation and what is included with each. By having everything included in a single document, you can easily share it with employees.

Key Takeaways

It doesn’t have to be a time-consuming or overwhelming task to create a compensation plan for your company. There are a ton of benefits to doing so and your business will only benefit in the long run. A competitive compensation plan can attract the top talent out there and keep them as loyal employees.

Each business is going to have a little bit of a different compensation plan depending on what they offer their employees. It’s important to recognize what your main needs are in order to stay competitive. But by highlighting the compensation an employee will receive when working for you, it can help ease their mind when they make a decision.

Start with an outline and determine all of your needs. Break down current employee job descriptions so there is no confusion. You can then figure out the forms of compensation each employee can receive. Make sure to include any incentives, bonuses and benefits.

Once you have all that information in place, just organize it into a single document. You can then easily share it with employees or potential candidates to show value.

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