by Lacey Halpern, XeniumHR.com

How do you reward your employees for a job well done? Do you recognize them in the moment? On a monthly basis? At all?

As employers have the resources to spend more time, energy, and money on retention, they can look to things such as an Employee of the Month program to publicly recognize top performers within the organization. Employers must take in to consideration that fairness, equality and a well communicated program are vital to the success of an employee of the month program.

By Stacey Carroll, PayScale.com 

This week, I presented a new webinar entitled "Compensation Strategies that Work." If folks were hoping that I had a magic answer for the compensation strategy that works best they were disappointed. The point of the webinar was that the strategy that works best for your organization is the one that your senior leadership team thinks fits your organization's particular business objectives.

by Jessica Miller-Merrell, xceptionalhr.com, blogging4jobs.com

Eighty-three percent of Americans believe telecommuting’s popularity is on the rise. With the rise of smart phones, tablets and other mobile technologies, working from home has never been easier. And never before have employees been willing to give up certain benefits just to have a home-based job. 

by Laleh Hassibi, PayScale.com

Historically, decisions about salary involved heavy binders full of data and some serious guesswork; HR professionals found the best data sources and comparison data points available and then made ad hoc adjustments to price the position in question. Today, compensation analysis should be a science, not an art. With PayScale’s union of fresh detailed data and clever statistical modeling in an easy to use software service, we're blinding the HR community with science! To understand how PayScale is rocking it, let’s take a look at the science of PayScale.

Mykkah Herner, MA, CCP, Compensation Consultant at PayScale.com

Benchmarking is Serious Business

The job of benchmarking positions is very serious business. I always want to make sure I get the best and most relevant information about every position in a client’s organization so I can make sure I’m making an apples-to-apples comparison with positions in the market. Such is my dedication to benchmarking that I found myself dreaming about benchmarking one job in particular… my cat’s position. Yes, in my now-recurring dream, my cat is in my face, meowing fervently as she expects (demands actually) accurate compensation, right away, for her position. 

by Laleh Hassibi, PayScale.com

For the first time since the inception of The PayScale Index, small business wages are growing faster than their medium and large-sized business counterparts. This little but important fact has many sitting up and taking notice. Business Insider published an article about this fact noting that, “historically large companies experienced larger pay increases, however over the last two quarters this has switched.”

via imgur i.imgur.com/ovlVk.png

The topic of Mitt Romney’s “binder full of women” is all over the social media channels today and the subject of memes, blogs and various other forms of snidery. HR professionals know all about binders, having relied on binders full of salary data to make decisions about pay for a long time. It’s definitely time to rethink the outdated binder-method of HR, but that’s a whole different blog article. Right now, I want to take a swing at gender pay inequity, which is the heart of the Mitt Romney binder debacle. Men making more money than women is not a new discussion by far, but one that can easily be made a non-issue in any company with some good solid compensation planning.

By Mykkah Herner, MA, CCP, Compensation Consultant at PayScale.com

Think ignorance is bliss?

You’ve heard some rumbling here and there, but no one has come out and said anything. That means you don’t have a compensation issue. Right? Well, maybe, but do you really want to chance losing your top performers? We’ve heard this from a number of potential clients: “We don’t have any major problems, so comp strategy is not a priority. We think we may have issues with pay, but not knowing for sure makes us feel better. Ignorance is bliss.” This “do nothing” objection may work out alright for the short term, but in the long term you run a real risk of losing your top performers, having pay inequity issues, and generally being a poor steward of one of the largest resource expenses in your organization - employee compensation.

by Tim Low, VP of Marketing, PayScale.com

I attended the HR Technology Conference and Expo in Chicago this week to meet with some partners, attend some sessions, and evaluate the show for PayScale for next year. 

The sleepy little backwater that used to be called HRIS is now Human Capital Management (HCM) and encompasses software and tools for everything HR from recruiting and onboarding, to training, development (learning), performance management, compensation :) and even 'employer branding' (think of your company page on LinkedIn). 

Here are three takeaways from the show: 

By Laleh Hassibi, PayScale.com

PayScale has a lot of salary data – in fact, 35 million salary surveys’ worth. While we like to use it to help both individuals and organizations make salary decisions, we also employ a really smart economist, Katie Bardaro, who analyzes our data to take a look back at salary trends. We're pleased to present you with the good news in the newest release of The PayScale Index.

What is The PayScale Index? The PayScale Index follows the change in salaries of employed US workers, revealing trends in compensation over time. It specifically measures the quarterly change in the total cash compensation of full-time private industry employees nationally, with additional detail on the 20 largest metropolitan areas, 15 industries, 3 company sizes and 19 job categories. For full details about how The PayScale Index is calculated, check out the methodology behind it. 

By Laleh Hassibi, PayScale.com

The Compliance and Safety team just released the infographic “Does the Food We Eat Affect Our Productivity?” According to their research, encouraging your employees to eat the right foods will give them the ability to be productive powerhouses. Compensating them right isn’t the only way to get them to be more productive. Adequate nourishment can raise national productivity levels by 20%!

PayScale is growing fast! 500 corporations from across the globe made the decision to subscribe to PayScale's SaaS offerings so far in 2012. New customers in Q3 include Clemson University, Heartland Financial, Earthbound Farms, and Swift Transportation. They join many organizations, including, Adecco, Bloomberg BNA, Gulfstream Goodwill Industries, the Tribune Company and Perry Ellis who signed on with PayScale in the first half of the year.

by Evan Rodd, PayScale.com

As Yahoo’s third CEO this year, Marissa Mayer is wasting no time turning Yahoo into a fast-paced, mobile force to be reckoned with. She has already replaced chief financial officer Tim Morse, who served as interim CEO last year. Morse has stated he was nervous about working with a new CEO, and rightfully so. Did he know his days were numbered?

Last week, Mayer held an employee meeting to reveal her vision for the new Yahoo. Anonymous employees rushed to dish on their new boss’ plans for company overhaul, though Melissa isn’t sharing any specific details regarding new products or strategies. What Mayer presented was a general vision of the new Yahoo, and it sounds like she has big plans. 

Mykkah Herner, MA, CCP
Compensation Consultant at PayScale

I’ve worked with organizations of various employee sizes, from as small as 19 up into the thousands, helping them to develop stellar compensation plans. I really enjoy working with companies that have between 75 and 125 employees. Generally, by that point, there is some acknowledgment that what they are currently doing isn’t working. There is also often some concern about developing something too rigid. These organizations will typically see a huge positive business impact from developing a clear comp plan.