Compensation Planning

Connect your values to your reward system

Thriving businesses depend on engaged, effective employees. A smart compensation plan is one of your best tools for building a high quality workforce. Paying workers fairly, competitively and transparently helps retain top-performing employees, motivate their progress, and recruit in-demand talent. A comprehensive compensation plan reflects an organization’s values and provides a clear decision tree for making strategic pay choices.

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Struggling to create competitive, cost-effective pay structures?

HR departments and business leaders often find compensation planning to be one of the most challenging aspects of building exceptional workplaces. Why?

  • Markets move: Competitive compensation responds to constantly changing economic factors. In fact, 90% of organizations report they are making salary adjustments twice a year now, instead of just once.1
  • Time is limited: Over-stretched HR departments don’t always have the bandwidth for the data-heavy, time-consuming process of building a plan from scratch.
  • New questions emerge: Remote and hybrid workplaces added a new layer of geographical differentials onto planning decisions. What other wrinkles are ahead?

Is your compensation philosophy robust enough to drive a strategic compensation plan?

Get support through the entire process

Employers Council can oversee your entire compensation planning process — from creating a compensation philosophy to drafting the plan to crafting an internal communication strategy — or assist with any portion of the project. Our services include:

  • Comprehensive Compensation Planning

  • Compensation Plan Audits

  • Compensation Philosophy Creation

  • Job Description Review

  • Job Matching, Evaluation and Analysis

  • Base Compensation Design

  • Market Pricing

  • Executive Market Analysis

  • Benefits Analysis

  • Cost Analysis

  • Plan Implementation

Choose Employers Council for a wide scope of compensation expertise

Employers Council has decades of planning experience and the bandwidth to take on your most complex questions. Our consultants have deep knowledge of reward system trends, best practices, and even niche solutions. We ensure your plan is as accurate as possible by using high-quality, verified and specialized market and survey data. If the process brings up additional needs, we can refer you to related resources and services, such as pay equity and recruiting help.

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I might not know the best route forward or the next steps, but I can always reach out to Employers Council. It's good to know I'm not in this alone. I have a wealth of resources and a treasure trove of knowledge [available for] me and my organization.
Gabriel Shahrouzi, HR Manager, Bluebird Botanicals

Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act: What employers need to know

Find out how Colorado’s regulations impact your hiring and reward strategies — and how to stay in compliance.
Download Your Guide

Salary Survey Results: Administrative Assistant II

Explore a sample of our salary survey results to see how accurate data can help you create better compensation plans.

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Resource

A Critical Review of Compensation Data from Surveys and Websites. Do You Know the Quality of the Data You are Using?

Learn the critical factors every employer should consider when evaluating compensation data’s reliability — and the high quality data available to Employers Council members and clients.

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Resource

9 Reasons Outsourced Compensation Planning is Essential to Organizational Health

A strategic compensation plan can help meet many organizational challenges, including losing talented employees to competitors. Here are 8 more reasons to outsource compensation planning.

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Resource

Managing Pay Equity Across State Lines

Does your operation cover more than one state, either physically or through remote workers? Learn how to ensure pay equity across multiple locations.

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1 “2023 Compensation Trends to Watch,” by Seán P. Gallagher.Cowdenassociates. 2 March 2023. Accessed 3 May 2023. https://cowdenassociates.com/2023-compensation-trends-to-watch