Cultivating Compensation Excellence with Workday®: Best Practices to Ensure Success

Few issues are as crucial to the employer-employee relationship as how employees are compensated. It drives talent recruitment and retention strategies and shapes employee incentive programs. Moreover, it significantly impacts a company’s balance sheet, as employee costs are often the most substantial cost in a business.

The annual Merit Review, Bonus payout, and stock options are pivotal components of a business’s remuneration model. They effectively align everyone within the organization, regardless of their role, in the same direction. Workday® emerges as the ideal platform to facilitate the Salary Increase, Bonus, and Stock process due to its ability to consolidate all necessary performance and compensation information for managers.

However, despite its advantages, navigating the compensation review process with Workday® can be complex. It involves numerous stakeholders in developing and refining the bonus model and salary increase budget, along with managing various business processes. Many Workday® customers tend to deploy Advanced Compensation in later phases when managers are more familiar with the system.

At ClouDevOps, we specialize in End-to-End configurations for the Workday® Advanced Compensation Module and support each year customers in preparing and running their Merit, Bonus, and Stock Campaigns as well as adjusting compensation statements.  Drawing from our experience working with over 40 different customers, we have distilled some best practices to help companies prepare for their merit, bonus, and stock management cycles:

Use Checklists to Prepare the Campaign

Creating bonus models may seem straightforward, but there are typically numerous moving parts to consider for a smooth operation. Before launch, secure merit/bonus/stock budgets, review performance factors, enroll employees in the process, and adjust proration and calculations. Some considerations include:

  • Monitoring Campaign Progress: Configure additional Workday® dashboards and reports to monitor the progress and address pending issues at both the global and country levels.

  • Check Compensation Information Accuracy: Ensure that compensation data in the payroll system aligns with Workday® to prevent discrepancies, especially in cases where Workday® integration with the payroll system is incomplete.

  • Filtering Eligible Employees: Consider staffing events like promotions or long-term leave, which can impact proration rules and percentage definitions. Manage processes like job changes and compensation requests during the review process to prevent issues.

  • Mock Run Your Campaign: Running a simulation in a sandbox environment allows your Compensation team to practice issue resolution, anticipate manager questions, and avoid missteps during the actual campaign.

    During the Advanced Compensation Campaign

    Anticipation is key to a smooth manager and employee experience. Address issues such as how to handle worker terminations initiated during the process and whether managers can view remaining pool amounts. Communicate these decisions to the campaign support team to avoid uncomfortable conversations or bonus claw backs later. Provide easily accessible support channels and FAQs to enhance the user experience and reduce errors.

     

    Leveraging Workday Reporting for Productivity and Accuracy

    Configure Workday® Advanced Compensation effectively to address the challenge of issuing compensation statements quickly while maintaining accuracy. Customize statement layouts and content according to your needs while extracting data from the Compensation review process. This may require some Studio or BIRT experience, readily accessible OnDemand from ClouDevOps. Additionally, distributing and securely storing each statement in the worker’s profile adds value to employees, managers, and HR.

    Conclusion

    Mastering the compensation review process with Workday® requires careful planning, attention to detail, and effective use of the platform’s capabilities. By following these best practices, companies can streamline their compensation cycles, enhance the employee experience, and achieve greater accuracy and efficiency in managing compensation. With the right approach, Workday® can truly be a powerful tool in optimizing your remuneration model.

    Want even more insight into this topic?

    Then take a look at our 10-slide presetation below, where we deep-dive even more into the topics discussed!

    Click here if you’d like to take a closer look and download it.

     

    Torna alla Pagina Principale