Prepare for a Pay Conversation
Learn how you can use Smart Compensation to hold informed pay conversations with your employees.
Tip: Watch this video to learn how to view comp summaries and download pay letters.
What is a pay conversation?
A pay conversation is a discussion between you and your employees about changes in their compensation. As a manager, it provides an opportunity for you to clarify and explain compensation decisions that occurred during the compensation cycle and also allows you to address any employee questions or concerns. The goal is for each employee to leave the conversation with an understanding of your company's approach to pay, the rationale behind their own pay, and the decisions that were made about their pay. This conversation should occur whenever a meaningful pay event or change occurs, such as a raise, promotion, or bonus payout.
With Smart Compensation, you can view compensation summaries for employees that prepares you to have healthier pay conversations with them. By exploring historic data about employees from multiple sources in a single interface, you will come prepared to have a meaningful discussion that will optimize the impact of pay to motivate your employees. Smart Compensation guides you with a simple user interface, crafted to allow you to work through your tasks efficiently and build trust along the way.
Once the compensation cycle is closed, you will be able to view a compensation summary.
To view a compensation summary:
- Click the More button
> View task.
Assess compensation history and decisions
To prepare for your pay conversation, Smart Compensation provides you with an opportunity to run a compensation analysis for your employees. A compensation analysis allows you to look at the history of compensation attributes for an employee such as job name, tenure, and time since promotion ahead of your pay conversation. Familiarizing yourself with an employee's compensation history prepares you to have an informed discussion that will optimize the impact of pay to motivate employees.
Review compensation adjustments
To continue your preparation ahead of your pay conversation, take a look at your employees’ compensation adjustments to help you explain the adjustments they received, and provide guidance on how they can further develop their skills and performance for future cycles. By looking at these attributes, you can better prepare to explain how compensation decisions were made so the employee understands all of the factors involved in their pay for their specific role. With this knowledge, you should be able to explain your company's approach to pay, the rationale behind the employee's pay, and the decisions that were made about their pay. During your review, you can:
- Click Pay philosophy guidelines to view notes about your company's pay philosophy guidelines.
- Click Comp adjustment notes to view notes about compensation adjustments made during the cycle.
- Click View details to get a detailed explanation of what went into the calculation for base pay or bonus.
Deliver pay letter
Finally, you can download your employee's pay letter in PDF format to deliver to them as needed.