Budgeting season is here. Whether you tie your compensation plan to your performance plans or not, your organization is probably thinking hard about compensation. Between inflation, pay equity, and employee retention, compensation planning can create some challenges. Many organizations are beginning to budget for higher pay raises than in previous years. They may not stick to what they set in their budget to account for the tight labor market. Having a tool to help your organization can help to reduce the headache of calculating all of those numbers. Over the past three releases, our product team has introduced 12 new compensation and budgeting enhancements. Let’s explore how some of those compensation enhancements can help you stay in line during your compensation season.
Compensation Cycles
If your compensation cycle is consistent, the copy comp cycle (R80) feature will save time when creating new ones. The copy feature brings over all the existing configuration from the cloned cycle. But it still allows you to make adjustments before beginning the cycle.
The new date features ensure only the employees who need to be included in the compensation cycle will be there. So you don’t have to worry about non-eligible employees accidentally landing on the worksheet. The Eligibility Period Days Since (R81) option is more flexible, helping to narrow down the eligible employees beyond just the hire date. Now it includes other date fields configured in your system. You can choose your eligibility periods with more options. Also, you can set a Freeze As Of date (R81). This will stop pulling employees into the compensation cycle as of the date set. So, if you want to align the eligibility period and the freeze date, those can now be set to function together.
Merit Matrices and Worksheets
To simplify the process of adding increases to your employees, you can utilize a Single Value Merit Matrix (R81) option when creating a new merit matrix. When using the performance review functionality, the single value matrix allows you to enter a single value in each of the ratings on the matrix. Instead of selecting an increase amount from a range of values, you can have a set amount given based on the rating. Then those increases can be automatically populated (R82) on the manager’s worksheet when the performance rating value is generated at the Send Score or Finalized step in the Performance Review or at the time of the Compensation Cycle creation. The auto-populated amount will also be editable. So if you have a situation where the auto-populated value doesn’t match the intended value, you can fix it.
Budget Tools
Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for — the “how can I use these functions to help budget my employees’ pay” question. As managers dive into their worksheets, they will need budgeting standards to ensure they aren’t going too far over (or under) budget and align to the overall budget.
New validations
(R80) have been put in place so that your managers will not be able to exceed the budget. They will receive an error message if they try to do so. And the fields needing attention will be highlighted (R81). On the flip side, if the checkbox is enabled, managers will be able to exceed the budget, if needed.
Additionally, when budgeting, it is crucial to see the amounts in an overall view and ensure those amounts appear correctly.
Rounding
(R80) of those amounts due to percentage increases can be a cause of headaches, so the system will now calculate the percentages to the fourth decimal place, but it will display the amount rounded to the second decimal place. This helps make the proposed budget amount closer to where you want the budget to be when using a dollar amount to set the budget versus the percentage. It is also important that the budgets are reflected throughout the organizational hierarchy (R80). As changes are made and increase amounts are set, these changes are reflected in all upper-level managers’ Comparative Budget Assigned and the Manager’s Organization Budget widgets.
Reviewing and Approving
Knowing when worksheets are ready to be reviewed and approved can sometimes be tricky, but now there is a new notification (R80) that can be sent right to the approvers. The notification is sent when a worksheet has no more entries available based on either the Compensation Cycle Close Date or if there are no entries in a status other than pending. Now approvals can take place in a timely manner.
When hiring, job changes, transfers, and promotions are constant, calculating the compensation amounts based on a proration can be difficult. With the new prorated visibility (R80) feature, managers and approvers can view the prorated amounts and percentages in the To-Do items. This makes it easy for managers to view those amounts in a pop-up when modifying, approving, or finalizing the proposal.
Where to Learn More
Workforce Go! HCM – Learning Center
The Learning Center offers a learning journey to get you started. The onboarding learning journey includes two self-paced courses and an instructor-led training to help guide you through using the functionality. Additionally, there are several job aids available that can help assist you through the Compensation module configuration and troubleshooting. Access the Learning Center through your Workforce Go! HCM account by navigating to My Info> Help> Learning Center
