Assignment 5: Employee Compensation and Benefits
Spring 2016
Choose the type of organization for which you are designing the package.
Answer: The chosen organization for the purpose of designing the employee compensation and benefits package is a software consultancy firm in the city of Charlotte, located in Southwestern North Carolina. It is a small-sized private establishment with a workforce of 20 employees working in different departments. The post considered for the designing of benefits package is that of HR department secretary.
Develop an employee compensation and benefits package for this new position. Support your ideas for the compensation/benefits package.
Answer: The current compensation and benefits plan for HR secretary post has been designed keeping in mind the internal factors such as small scale operations, limited financial resources, importance of duties and responsibilities associated with the post at the moment and its strategic linkage with the attainment of broader organizational goals. In external considerations, the prevailing industry pay rates, governing compensation regulations and current availability of skills and talent in the labor market have been utilized (Galuscak, et al. 2010).
Before embarking upon the designing of the package, it is essential to look at the core and additional duties of the HR secretary. The HR secretary should be a supporting pillar to the working of the HR department. His/her essential functions would include record maintenance, making calls, handling queries, assisting the HR staff, receiving important documents and visitors, helping in the employee induction process, assisting in developing employee compensation, development and other HR plans and administrative tasks and projects, reporting to the HR director and adhering to his commands pertaining to attending meetings, keeping records and other functions as and when assigned. The work for this post would entail a sitting job with 20% of moving and 10% of standing tasks (Robert Half, 2016).
Source: BLS (2016)
The base salary, on the basis of above statistics, is set at $32,000 per annum for the given HR secretary post which falls in the median range.
The benefits package for the post will comprise a mix of core and voluntary benefits. The former category of benefits is those which have to be adhered to because of federal and state regulations and these are workers’ insurance, retirement savings, pay for overtime, unemployment insurance, holidays and vacations and sickness pay. The voluntary ones include dental and eye-care allowance, on-site day-care provision for children, mortgage services and tuition fee reimbursement.
The current post comes under the category of exempt jobs as it requires a certain level of skill and expertise and is associated with a professional level. This post will get a fixed salary in a definite time interval and which shall be inclusive of the above mentioned core and voluntary benefits. Other than explicit financial benefits, the organization will endeavor to offer the incumbent implicit non-financial benefits like workplace security, clean and hygienic work environment, challenging tasks, opportunities for growth and learning and workplace flexibility to retain the talent in-house (Jackson, Schuler & Werner, 2008).
References
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BLS (2016). Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2015 43-4161 Human Resources Assistants, Except Payroll and Timekeeping. Retrieved 8 June, 2016 from http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes434161.htm
Galuscak, K., Keeney, M., Nicolitsas, D., Smets, F., Strzelecki, P., & Vodopivec, M. (2010). The determination of wages of newly hired employees: survey evidence on internal versus external factors. European Central Bank, Working Paper Series, no. 1153.
Jackson, S., Schuler, R., & Werner, S. (2008). Managing human resources. Cengage Learning.
Robert Half (2016). 2016 Salary Guide: Administrative Hiring Trends. Retrieved 8 June, 2016 from https://www.roberthalf.com/sites/default/files/Media_Root/images/ot-pdfs/officeteam_2016_salary_guide.pdf
