Putting People First: Taking a Personal Approach to Total Comp Statements

Key takeaways:

• Personalized Design: RewardsFocus offers custom-designed total comp statements tailored to reflect your company’s culture and values, ensuring clarity and engagement.
• Expert Collaboration: Work directly with seasoned HR and data analysis professionals to create total comp statements that align with your specific objectives and branding.
• Enhanced Communication: Our approach to both content and design makes complex total rewards information easier for employees to understand.
• Time-Saving Efficiency: By handling data formatting and presentation, RewardsFocus saves your team time and reduces stress, offering a more impactful and customized experience than standard online platforms.

In recent years, the HR and human capital management field has shifted towards software platforms that centralize HR functions and employee data into single, “do everything” online systems. However, a significant challenge for employers in this digital transition is effectively communicating total rewards information. This includes generating total comp statements that are easy for employees to understand and effectively convey the true value of the company’s investment in them in a clear and personalized manner.

Making total comp statements personal

The personal aspect is crucial. While online platforms can effectively present large amounts of data in standard formats, HR teams often face challenges when they need to customize this information for individual employees, since these large systems are notoriously difficult to customize.

Who do they contact to make changes, run tests on the data, or ask for advice on the best way to present the data? With larger online HR portals, that usually means taking a number in the support queue.

Most companies would prefer their total comp statements to reflect the values, brand and culture that they have purposely built into their company’s DNA. They also strive to make their total rewards packages as personalized and easy to digest as possible, so that their people can understand both their value to the organization, and remain engaged and motivated to participate in all of the benefits programs available to them.

The “people first” approach to designing statements

Achieving these goals requires a “people first” approach to designing and delivering customized total comp statements, balancing the objectives of the teams that generate them along with the concerns of the individual employees who receive them. To balance these needs effectively requires much more than easy web access and data management – it demands a personal touch, an individual experienced in both employee communications and data visualization who will work with clients at every step along the total comp statement design process.

This is the exact approach that RewardsFocus has taken for years, and we hear over and over again that it’s the reason clients have stayed with us across multiple years and team turnover. Each RewardsFocus client is matched with an expert project manager whose skill set includes deep knowledge of compensation and benefits, employee communications and data analysis. 

From organizing kick-off calls, answering client questions off-hours or generating samples for clients to review before running statements for thousands of employees – the personal touch is what makes the process work so well for clients.

Designing total comp statements intentionally, with a seasoned expert

Working directly with an expert leads to more impactful total rewards communications. HR teams and leadership simply can’t achieve the same results using a standardized, online benefits software platform.

1. Understand before the upload – When designing your total comp statements, the first thing that should happen is a kickoff call between your team and a dedicated professional whose aim is to understand your objectives. Instead of just uploading data into a software package and having it crunched and presented in a standard format, making a personal connection with an expert helps to clarify goals and understand nuances.
2. Understanding what makes each employer unique – Before working with a client, our project managers request benefit guides and branding guidelines—and yes, we actually read them! We also invest time in understanding your organization and the specifics of your compensation and benefits offerings. We view total comp statements as a valuable opportunity to highlight what makes your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) unique, as well as to convey your company’s culture and values.
3. Creating what you envision – We don’t provide clients with standard statement templates that they then configure; rather, we present samples that serve as a starting point to create a customized statement for your organization. From there, we work as a team to ultimately produce a total comp statement that meets each client’s unique needs.
4. A real person that responds – Throughout the entire process, if there are questions, concerns, or changes (and there are always changes), a dedicated project manager is always just a phone call or email away. If you’re using a larger HR platform and need to make any customized requests, you likely won’t be able to reach a specific person – and more often than not, the format they have in place is your only option.
5. Dealing with data – The data side of total comp statements is often tricky. Usually there are multiple data sources and formats. RewardsFocus can merge data from multiple systems, saving you many hours, not to mention a great deal of stress. The resulting total comp statements not only have an impact on employees but also reflect well on the organization’s HR team.

These are only some of the time-saving and stress-reducing benefits that come from working directly with seasoned experts, to craft total comp statements that are engaging, understandable and reflective of your unique company culture. You just can’t get those kinds of results from uploading data into an online platform.

To engage with one of our experienced total rewards statements advisors today, reach out here to learn more and start the conversation.