We can review your reward strategy, helping you decide what you want it to achieve and what needs to be done to build it.
We will talk to the people responsible for reward and can also speak with other key stakeholders about current reward practices and what they'd like to see in the future.
Having summarised our findings, we will report these back to you, highlighting any risk areas and recommending how to address them.
Once a reward strategy has been set, it should be reviewed as your organisation evolves to ensure that it remains relevant.
Reward strategy
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A reward strategy is a plan that shows how you will reward your employees for their work and achievements. It helps you communicate the purpose and value of your rewards to your employees.
A successful reward strategy will contribute to the performance of an organisation. It should be closely aligned to your HR strategy and should match your business goals, values, and culture.
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A clearly communicated strategy that explains how pay levels are set, how job complexity links to pay, and how performance will be rewarded.
It should also demonstrate how your employee benefits and your learning and development provision support the organisation.
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EBRS was commissioned by Shepherds Friendly, a financial mutual society, to review their Executive remuneration and bonus schemes.
We recommended that they also look more broadly at their reward strategy to ensure that it aligns with their business strategy, culture and values:
“As well as examining our reward practices, Karl and Alison spent time getting to know the business, meeting with senior managers and running focus groups with our staff.
They collated all of the information they gathered and provided a balanced report that summarised what works well, highlighting risk areas and recommending how we could further strengthen what we do.
They presented the findings to our Remuneration Committee and we have implemented their advice.
We enjoyed working with Karl and Alison . Their approach was very collaborative and really listened to what we were hoping to achieve with this project.
We were kept up to date with progress throughout and everything was delivered within the agreed timescales.
We would have no hesitation in recommending the services of EBRS.”
Job evaluation
We see job evaluation as an essential tool that, when applied correctly, provides clear direction without weighing you down.
With the right guidance, the process can be streamlined and straightforward. We developed our Role Check system over a decade ago and have successfully applied it in all sorts of organisations to assess their jobs analytically.
The results can provide the basis for benchmarking pay against market data and as the foundation of a transparent grade and pay structure.
Job evaluation can also help when organisations are restructuring teams or checking for suitable alternative work options by checking if proposed roles match existing ones.
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Job evaluation and job matching are both systematic ways of comparing the relative value of your roles in your organisation.
These processes define the key elements of a job and the skills, knowledge and experience that are needed to do it. This helps employees to understand job size and the link that this has to their pay.
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Our job categorisation systems provide a reliable and consistent way of assessing the relative size and complexity of your roles.
Role Check is based around 10 factors that measure the key aspects of a role, taking account of its required skills, responsibilities and demands.
Developed in line with the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance, it will help to develop a fair and consistent pay structure and to protect your organisation from equal pay claims.
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The results can also be used to aid your recruitment and training processes, to establish career progression paths and to develop competency frameworks.
This can simplify the way that you categorise your jobs. This helps employees to understand job size and the link that this has to their pay.
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Big Society Capital is an organisation that aims is to improve the lives of people in the UK by connecting investment to charities and social enterprises that are creating social change.
We were asked to develop a system of categorising their roles that better reflected the organisation and helps with more robust communication about pay and progression in future.
We met with staff and managers to understand their roles and the context of the organisation.
We then developed options for a structure to categorise roles in a way that reflects the fluid structure of the organisation, working with the management team to create a job matching framework that showed example behaviours that employees would need to progress from one level to the next.
We went on to benchmark a proportion of their roles and then devised a robust pay structure that complements the structure.
“EBRS worked with us to develop a robust approach to managing grades and salaries. They are totally reliable and created positive relationships with those people that they worked with here. They provided sound practical advice whilst drawing upon the considerable expertise that they have.”
Pay and benefits benchmarking
Getting basic pay and employee benefits right is crucial if you are to recruit and retain staff. Using our tried and tested approach, we can provide a robust and objective assessment of the market rate for any of your roles.
We've helped clients who :
are restructuring teams.
are losing key staff to competitors.
have employees who are challenging their pay levels.
are concerned about equal pay risks.
Our findings impact on people’s pay so our benchmarking service is thorough and we take pride in providing accurate results that relate to your organisation.
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Benchmarking helps you to set salaries and test employee benefit levels, taking account of the market for your organisation's size, operating sector and location.
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The savings made by not paying the going rate for a role can be outweighed by the recruitment and training costs of replacing a valued employee who has been tempted away.
Your employees are more likely to feel that they are being treated fairly if they know that you are regularly using good market data to set pay rates.
Relying on internet searches is not sufficiently reliable to be worthwhile. You aren’t sure of an accurate match nor are advertised salaries necessarily what people are being paid.
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We start by discussing your organisation and its reward priorities with you. Then, we will use any available job information to work out the size of each role, confirming this with you as necessary.
We take account of role size and external market forces in our advice to make an accurate assessment. As pay benchmarking is about interpreting the available data, we access a wide range of surveys, using our own databases to complete the picture.
If appropriate, we can advise on the sourcing of additional survey data that will help to complete the picture for you.
We will then combine all of the data to provide you with a detailed report. This explains our methodology and background research, so you have the evidence that supports our findings.
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Cendex salary database
Covering over a million UK employees, this is constantly updated to provide a strong picture of pay, bonus and benefits based on organisation size, location and sector, as well as the job function and level of your roles.
Our Salary Check database
We have developed a sophisticated database of salary information which we use to assess pay levels that takes account of role sizes and your organisation's profile.
Our Advert Tracker database
Monitoring the advertised rates of a broad range of roles, this provides valuable information for benchmarking and indicates trends in market movements.
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Your employee benefits offering can say a lot about your organisation's culture and values.
It can help to increase employee engagement with the business and increase the perceived value of your reward package.
Employee benefits can also be used to embed cultural change and to improve recruitment and retention.
Pay structure design
When it comes to pay structures, one size does not fit all. To tailor yours, we will look at what works well and what issues you have with your current system, and also take account of how you see your organisation developing.
Most organisations start small and manage pay on a person-by-person basis, paying the going rate for each job. As companies grow, it becomes harder for them to manage pay without a more formal pay structure.
We will design some options that we think will suit you now and for the future. These can include pay progression mechanisms, performance management systems and bonus schemes where appropriate.
We will cost out the different options and can advise on how they could impact on your employees. We can then help you to communicate and implement it.
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Grouping similar roles into grades can greatly simplify pay management. Job categorisation can help to achieve this transparently.
Creating a more formal framework for pay makes it easier to explain to employees. They can see where they fit within the organisation and see the opportunities for career development and for earning more.
Pay progression can be linked to general market movements, to a measure of their performance, or to a combination of both.
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Pay can be linked to incremental points or managed more flexibly within a pay range. There are pros and cons to each and we can advise on what might suit your organisation.
We will help to ensure that your structure is flexible enough to adapt to unexpected changes in market rates.
It is important to test out different options to assess how they will work and to ensure that they are not discriminatory.
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To reward performance effectively, you need to measure and reward the right outcomes, and that the systems you use must be perceived to be fair.
We can develop mechanisms that appropriately incentivise your employees, either through basic pay or bonus schemes.
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The introduction of a new structure may be planned as part of broader HR changes, such as the introduction of a competency or behaviours framework, or to the development of a new performance management system. We can advise and assist with changes of this nature too.
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The Construction Youth Trust is a charity that helps young people access employment opportunities in the construction industry.
They asked us to develop a robust pay structure to help them as their organisation grows.
We started by evaluating their roles and then benchmarking pay and benefits.
Next, we devised a grade structure, providing options for managing pay within this to reflect the geographic spread of their staff.
We also advised them on how their reward strategy could be reviewed to support their organisational needs.
We discussed our findings and a series of options with their senior team, before providing them with a detailed report and recommendations.
“We enjoyed working with Karl who was very responsive to the needs of our organisation during this period of rapid growth and development.
We now have a pay scale structure with the ability for our staff to progress without having to change job.
EBRS made the whole process very easy for us.”
Employee surveys & focus groups
The best way to ensure that your reward strategy is relevant to your employees is to check their opinion and by using an external organisation, your staff are more likely to engage in the process and state their feelings.
We run customised employee opinion surveys, analysing the results and interpreting these for you. Information is treated sensitively, taking care to adhere to data protection principles.
On-site focus groups are a great way of finding out what people think and testing potential options. It’s fascinating to hear what staff are willing to share with us!
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Well-designed surveys can reach all of your employees, providing quantifiable data that can be more easily analysed.
The act of surveying itself can make employees feel valued and heard, potentially increasing their engagement.
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They gather direct feedback on employees’ perceptions of reward, highlighting what are of the most (and least) value.
As independent facilitators, we create a safe space for people to bring up inconsistencies or perceived unfairness in the pay and reward system that management might not be aware of.
Employee suggestions can help to shape future reward initiatives.
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A charity client sought to understand its employees’ views on the pay structure, performance management, employee benefits, recognition, and training and development.
At the start of the project, we conducted interviews with key stakeholders to gather initial insights, setting the stage for a broader survey.
We then created a Survey Monkey questionnaire to explore the key themes and to test some options.
This had a high completion rate and produced some candid responses!
Based on this feedback, we developed a pay structure that better emphasised career progression, recommended the development of a competency framework to go alongside their performance management system, and coherently tied the changes to a new reward strategy that reflected their values.
Bespoke surveys
We can collect data on specific roles for you, identifying and approaching comparator organisations.
To maximise participation levels, we contact the appropriate people and explain the nature of the survey to them. As an incentive, we provide the other participants with a summary of the results at the end of the process.
We blend the results with our other pay sources to give you a precise picture of the market.
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Robust reward data is scarce in many sectors and niche markets, so the only way to obtain reliable benchmarking data is to commission an independent survey that guarantees the confidentiality of participants.
We have considerable experience in designing and running surveys. Participants can quickly complete our no-nonsense questionnaires, either in Excel or through our secure online survey system.
We provide role descriptors that make it easy for participants to categorise their jobs, so that similar job types can be compared across organisations.
Survey returns are carefully analysed to make sure that the data is robust and then produce a detailed report that includes the pay data along with a full commentary to explain it.
We strictly observe data protection principles in our surveys. Individual contributions will remain confidential and your responses will be aggregated so that the data is not attributable.
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For clients with specialised roles, we can blend salary survey data with insights from recruitment agencies in their sector.
This allows us to gather comprehensive and up-to-date information on market rates for their specific jobs. By sharing concise job summaries with the agencies, we collect consistent data that reflects our client’s roles.
We share the anonymised findings with participants, offering them valuable market intelligence as an incentive for their contribution.
This collaborative approach means we can assemble data on current market trends for our client’s roles, so they can make informed decisions on their pay rates.
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How high will pay rises be in the next pay round? What are other housing organisations planning?
Our free survey runs at the end of each year and helps housing associations plan for their pay review.
Contact us to find out more!
Equal pay
We can help you work towards equality in your organisation’s reward structures and then develop strategies to maintain them.
Knowing the detail of the pay gaps in your organisation makes sound business sense - and larger organisations have to publish their gender pay gaps annually.
We can audit pay gaps (typically by gender and ethnicity), then explain our findings and provide you with advice on tackling any risk areas we find.
This might involve helping you implement more transparent structures and apply robust reward policies that will promote equal pay.
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Gender pay reporting legislation requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year showing how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees.
While placing greater focus on fair pay, the publication of adverse results or the failure to comply with the legislation may lead to negative publicity and damaged reputations. In extreme cases, any resulting equal pay claims could be costly.
When publishing the report, you should consider whether to include additional context to the figures in supporting commentary. This could be to explain any actions being taken to address pay gaps or to explain how they compare with peer organisations.
As reporting is annual, you will need to think carefully about how to make improvements to the statistics year on year - and how to use the process to help improve your business.
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We will accurately assemble the gender pay metrics that you need to report.
To capture the right data, we will give you a template to populate, along with guidance notes that explain the information that you need to include.
We will then summarise this in a report template ready to be signed off and published. You can add any further commentary to the results to help present them in the best context.
We will conduct a more detailed analysis of your gender pay data, such as by job level, full time/part time roles and by function, business unit and region.
The review can also be extended to cover other comparisons, such as by ethnicity and disability, depending on your structure and the data you collect.
We can also consider the wider elements of your total reward package, such as allowances and benefits to provide a full picture.
Our findings will be set out in a report that clearly explains the issues. We will identify any pay gaps and bring these to your attention, helping you to focus on any high risk areas.
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The Government provides a website from which gender pay metrics from all submitted returns can be downloaded.
To draw valid comparisons with your peers is not easy, but we have developed a database which enables us to drill down and look at the published information to assess how you compare with similar organisations. We also use this to show the trends in your figures against your previous returns. It also puts things into perspective by showing exactly where you rank against your peers.
We can present the data in a table that compares your data for each measure with:
the whole sample.
organisations in your size range.
a requested sample of named organisations.
organisations in your employer's Standard industrial classification of economic activities (SIC) code.
As there is a time lag between data submission and its inclusion on the website, we can also search for specific organisations' gender pay gap reports and incorporate this data for you.
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“EBRS supported us to produce our Gender Pay Gap report.
They translated a very technical concept into a practical project plan and shared key milestones that we needed to follow.
Karl provided easy to use documentation and tips on how to complete our report in plenty of time.
I would recommend EBRS to support businesses creating their Gender Pay reports.”