Compensation and Benefits Management Report for Accent Inc.

This report provides a detailed analysis of compensation and benefits management within the context of Accent Incorporated. It begins by outlining the advantages of a total rewards system, emphasizing its role in employee retention, performance, and transparency. The report then delves into the importance of a pay philosophy, particularly for a private sector organization, discussing competitive base pay, incentive structures, and the need for consistency in implementation. Furthermore, it explores four key objectives for ensuring pay effectiveness, including attracting top talent, retaining and rewarding personnel, boosting motivation, and maximizing return on investment. The report concludes by contrasting basic fixed rate schemes with incentive schemes, highlighting differences in productivity, competition, pressure on customers, and worker retention. Overall, the report offers valuable insights into the strategic management of compensation and benefits to achieve organizational goals.

Running head: COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
Compensation and Benefits Management
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:
Course ID:

1COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Answer to Question 1:.....................................................................................................................2
Answer to Question 2:.....................................................................................................................4
Answer to Question 3:.....................................................................................................................5
References:......................................................................................................................................9

2COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
Answer to Question 1:
There are certain advantages of offering a total rewards system in Accent Incorporated
and they are discussed briefly as follows:
Employee retention and performance (Non-financial components):
The total rewards system offers ostensible paths for the overall career of a staff
depending on the basic template for the particular program. When an organisation recruits an
individual on a total rewards system, it could depict that staff the points at which pay raises,
bonuses, increased vacation and enhanced benefits take place during the career trajectory of the
individual (Bryant and Allen 2013). With the help of this system, Accent Incorporated could
provide immediate incentive for staff retention by providing a staff with a series of long-term
goals and projections. Thus, it helps in ensuring transparency by fostering an effective working
relationship in the organisation by bringing the staffs and managers on equal footing, when it
comes to knowledge concerning career trajectories.
In addition, Accent Incorporated could restrict ostensible career trajectories, even though
staffs understand that certain aspects of such trajectories like bonuses take place only, if the
performance standards are met. This program constitutes of aspects like training and
performance management and professional development, which enable the staffs to adopt special
and new skills with the help of training and education (Cerdin and Brewster 2014). Hence, with
the help of this system, Accent Incorporated could include methods of staff performance
monitoring for enabling staffs to create and input dialogue, all of which assist in fostering an
association of mutual input. This would lead to increased levels of understanding and
professional respect.

3COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
Controllable expenses (Financial components):
The overall and long-term scope of the total rewards program enables an organisation to
develop rightful projections of the amount incurred on each staff over the course of a number of
years (Hofmann 2015). By forming a total rewards system, Accent Incorporated could possess
the capability of creating an expenditure matrix, which fits the finances of the program at its
outset as well as within the parameters of the anticipated growth of the organisation as it forms.
This system has cyclical nature that takes into account design, execution, evaluation, assessment
and back to design. Thus, it enables for adjustments in expenses to keep with variations in the
company budget. With the increase in earnings, Accent Incorporated could filter more money to
staffs in the form of increasing pay, providing staffs the growth perception along with
encouraging staff performance and longevity.
Pay administration process:
In the words of Klingner, Nalbandian and Llorens (2015), total rewards system provide
the benefit of centralised administration in staff-related concerns that take into account pay,
benefits and training. In case of Accent Incorporated, such system of administration provides the
benefit of an overall system through which to control each aspect. In the existing system of the
organisation, the healthcare administration takes place distinctively from pay, while pay raises
and bonuses occur on a different schedule than training and development. By applying the total
rewards system, each of these stuffs takes place on a single time and it could be overseen
simultaneously.

4COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
Answer to Question 2:
A pay philosophy is the commitment of an organisation to the way it values its staffs
(Long and Perumal 2014). As Accent Incorporated is a private sector organisation, it generally
needs a philosophy of competitive pay and its purpose is to retain, attract and motivate staffs. In
order to achieve these goals, it could use a mix of three compensation components. These
include base pay, incentive pay and benefits or non-financial rewards. Since Accent Incorporated
has moderate cash resources, the philosophy of the organisation might be depicted like this:
 Paying a competitive base pay, which should not be aggressive; however, a pay
comparable to what a staff could find in other similar organisations
 Offering equity to all the staffs in the organisation, so that they could reap the benefits of
the organisation
 Accent Incorporated is required to be aggressive in the overall compensation with the
help of incentives. For instance, if a staff is below market by $20,000 in base pay, market
parity could be delivered through a signing bonus of $5,000; retention bonus of $5,000
and $10,000 incentive. Thus, the incentive programs need to be designed for providing
greater compensation to high-performance staffs.
According to the Malaysian law, the pay practices need to be consistent, indiscriminate and it
need not be arbitrary. However, a pay philosophy might include various approaches for various
types of staffs. For instance, Accent Incorporated might determine to pay a competitive rate for
most tasks and aggressive rate for tasks particularly difficult to fill and significant to the bottom
line (Oladapo 2014). Hence, it could pay its sales personnel and executives at the 75th percentile
and the remaining staffs at the 50th percentile.

5COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
However, if a philosophy is applied inconsistently, it could devalue the staffs, which might
cause trouble. For instance, it is assumed that Accent Incorporated established a flat rate of $9.90
per hour for the non-exempt staffs in the role of customer service. The turnover of the
department has been 200%. Despite the available flat rate, few staffs with lower degrees
negotiated successfully for $10 per hour, while the staffs having long experience assumed that
such rate was non-negotiable. Thus, this might lead to discrepancies due to the pay philosophy,
which would increase the expenses of the organisation (Rogers 2014).
In order to implement the pay philosophy, Accent Incorporated needs to enhance its
communication level, since a sound philosophy develops a sense of fairness. Hence, it needs to
advertise its pay structure as a retention and recruitment strategy (Saxena and Rai 2016). It could
publish the pay philosophy in a staff handbook for depicting to the staffs about its standing in
relation to the market. For instance, in case of Accent Incorporated, if it experiences greater
turnover in customer service department, it could compensate the representatives of the
department above market. The individuals working in the department might receive efficient
workspaces, incentive plans and greater base pay than the market (Schiemann 2014). Under such
situation, the CEO of Accent Incorporated needs to communicate about change in the philosophy
to the staffs by presenting solid reasons behind the undertaken decision.
Answer to Question 3:
The four objectives that Accent Incorporated could consider to ensure pay effectiveness
include the following:
To attract top talent:

6COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
According to Shortland (2017), one of the main goals of compensation needs to be
recruiting qualified and experienced talent. With a competitive compensation in place, Accent
Incorporated could be able to attract the top talents in the industry.
To retain and reward personnel:
It would not be effective for an organisation to lose the top talent to its rivals, as it would
minimise its overall organisational effectiveness (Stone and Deadrick 2015). Thus, Accent
Incorporated could find out market values for its staffs and design its pay accordingly. In
addition, it could establish pay-for-performance models for driving performance by
strengthening associates to accomplish new goals and push further.
To boost motivation:
If the pay structure of Accent Incorporated is effective, the compensation plan could
increase motivation across the various departments within the organisation. The staffs knowing
that they are compensated fairly for their work would feel appreciated and hence, they are
probable to remain committed, productive and engaged. An effective compensation plan could
increase job satisfaction of the organisation.
To maximise return on investment:
If Accent Incorporated develops a compensation plan staying within budget along with
driving productivity with the help of pay-for-performance and other tactics of motivation, it
could develop a plan equitable for the organisation and beneficial for the hard-working staffs.
Thus, it could use compensation management software for simplifying planning processes to
assist in accomplishing the objectives listed above without putting any burden on HR. Moreover,

7COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
the management could tailor the same to the organisation for prioritising the important
objectives.
The major differences between basic fixed rate scheme and incentive scheme include the
following:
Points of dissimilarities Basic wage rate scheme Incentive scheme
Productivity Fixed payment system might
not motivate the staffs to work
hard and it could lead to over-
compensating poor performers
and under-compensating top
performers.
Incentive scheme provides the
staffs with incentives to be
more productive, which could
lead to greater sales and
profitability for the
organisation. In addition, the
management of Accent
Incorporated need not have to
incur much for under-
performing staffs.
Competition In case of fixed pay, there
would be absence of any
competition amongst the
staffs, which would minimise
the interest of conflict (Wang
and Singh 2014).
Incentive pay could lead to
unhealthy competition
amongst the staffs.
Pressure on customers The staffs with fixed wages do
not need to exert pressure on
The sales staffs could exert
pressure on the clients, as

8COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
the customers to increase
sales, as their payments are
not reliant on sales volume.
greater sales would increase
their overall compensation.
Retaining workers The workers receiving
incentives perform well during
sound business conditions and
vice-versa.
The performance of the
workers tends to remain the
same during all times of the
year.

9COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS MANAGEMENT
References:
Bryant, P.C. and Allen, D.G., 2013. Compensation, benefits and employee turnover: HR
strategies for retaining top talent. Compensation & Benefits Review, 45(3), pp.171-175.
Cerdin, J.L. and Brewster, C., 2014. Talent management and expatriation: Bridging two streams
of research and practice. Journal of World Business, 49(2), pp.245-252.
Hofmann, A., 2015. Compensation and Benefits: Essentials of Base Salary. Handbook of Human
Resources Management, pp.1-15.
Klingner, D., Nalbandian, J. and Llorens, J.J., 2015. Public personnel management. Routledge.
Long, C.S. and Perumal, P., 2014. EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON EMPLOYEES'TURNOVER INTENTION. International
Journal of Business and society, 15(1), p.111.
Oladapo, V., 2014. The impact of talent management on retention. Journal of business studies
quarterly, 5(3), p.19.
Rogers, D., 2014. Compensation and benefits survey 2013: Education and job responsibility key
to increased compensation. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 114(1), pp.17-33.
Saxena, N. and Rai, H., 2016. Correlations and organisational effects of compensation and
benefits, job satisfaction, career satisfaction and job stress in public and private hospitals in
Lucknow, India. Asia Pacific Journal of Health Management, 11(2), p.65.
Schiemann, W.A., 2014. From talent management to talent optimization. Journal of World
Business, 49(2), pp.281-288.