Client
A well-known retailer of 80,000 heads with a broad range of business areas and skill sets including retail, health, logistics and central support.
Solution
- To audit the organisation on how transparent their pay processes were and identify the steps they would need to take to make progress.
Challenge
- Reward Team were conscious of the EU Pay Transparency Directive and the expectations this was creating but knew they were a long way from being transparent in their pay approach.
- Challenges known but lack of resource to address them.
Impact
- Identified what was missing in their reward approach that would be a barrier to transparency and what they would need to implement to overcome this.
- Highlighted the issues and solutions which the People Team could build into their strategy and create a business case for.
- Broke down what was a very broad requirement into manageable stages that the People Team could more realistically work on with the relevant business units.
Context
The client had well established pay processes, frameworks, and guidelines; however, these were known in detail only by the Reward team. The HR team and those directly involved in pay decisions knew only parts of the process. Employees had very little knowledge about their internal grade, their pay band, or the general Reward policy.
The Problem
- Well established pay processes, frameworks and guidelines, however these were known in detail only by the Reward team.
- Salaried employees had no visibility of their internal grade, their pay band, or the general Reward policy.
- Challenges were known but solutions were not.
Which meant:
- Risks around employee satisfaction and sense of fairness.
- Risks to strategic goals due to lack of wider business understanding of pay policy.
- Inability to meet pay transparency expectations from employees and candidates.
The Tension
An extremely complex and manual organisation where any change would be on a large scale. The team needed help in cutting through the noise to see the biggest priorities and where to start.
What Reward Heads did
- Reviewed existing materials and engaged with stakeholders to understand how Reward processes worked and what was being shared.
- Utilised Reward Heads' pay transparency roadmap model to assess the client's position on each stage, allocating a red, amber, or green status and making recommendations on steps they could take to improve their position.
- Considered the EU Pay Transparency Directive and how prepared the client would be if there were similar legislation in the UK.
- Presented our findings and recommendations to our stakeholders within the business and prepared a pack that would allow them to share the assessment with their Leadership Team.
Business Impact
- Highlighted the steps that would be needed to improve pay transparency.
- Helped the People team to break down the steps they would need to take and the order in which they could approach this alongside other projects.
- Brought in reward best practice and insights form other retailers to strengthen the business case for change.
People Impact
- At the point our recommendations are implemented and have time to embed we expect that the client will see an increase in employee engagement scores as employees have more visibility of how their own pay has been set.
- We expect that career pathways become clearer helping employees to consider a longer-term career within the organisation.
Which resulted in …
A robust and structured conversation could be held with business leaders on how the current barriers to pay transparency could be removed alongside other reward related projects that the Reward Heads team were supporting on.
If this feels familiar …
Lots of organisations in the UK are aware of the EU Pay Transparency Directive and how it is starting to impact expectations from employees and candidates. Many have work they need to do to become more transparent and we can help identify those areas, and what solutions would make the most sense in your organisation.
