Services

Continued and/or Project-based support

HR Know team of consultants provide continued and/or project-based support across a wide range of services with expertise in all aspects of total rewards and human resource management to clients from a broad spectrum of organizations and industries in the US and overseas.

Let HR Know ease the process of making pay decisions, competing for talent, and maintaining equitable pay practices.

HR Know Services can resolve pay inequities, pay compression, pay dispersion, and compensation plan structural issues. We analyze and build systems that are individually tailored for our clients’ organizations.

Let HR Know serve as your dedicated compensation department; Outsource market pricing, job evaluation, pay equity analysis, reclassification reviews, and job descriptions to us.

Don’t let outdated salary data restrict your company’s ability to keep salaries current and competitive. HR Know can update your existing compensation plan using current market salary data and trends to keep your organization competitive as the business landscape changes.

HR Know provides service and expertise to Compensation Committees, Boards, and other Corporate Governance entities in developing Total Rewards philosophies, policies, and structures for executives and other groups of employees who may be defined as “disqualified persons” under Section 4958 of the Internal Revenue Code.
 
We only use reliable, current salary surveys with relevant labor market data to determine fair market value and appropriate pay ranges for executive jobs. We can also review, develop, and help implement short term incentive plans, long-term incentive plans, bonus structures, retirement plans, benefits, and other components of Executive Total Compensation.
 
We provide the information and guidance you need to ensure fair, reasonable, competitive, and compliant Total Rewards strategies and practices.

HR Know offers the latest insights and advice on pay policies and practices related to overtime, on- call, productivity bonuses, shift differentials, severance, relocation, housing stipends, and other forms of variable compensation. We can review your short-term incentive plans, long term incentive plans, bonus structures, and retirement plans, or we can help you develop new ones. We also conduct payroll and budget auditing and cost-benefit analysis of contract labor, variable pay, and incentive compensation.

One of the most common things HR Know is asked to do is conduct wage market analysis using job benchmarking. We develop a methodology to suit each project, but it always includes sourcing market data from the relevant labor and wage markets using criteria that makes sense for your organization, such as size, revenue, business model, geographic location, industry, and other factors. We maintain a current library of reputable and reliable salary surveys with benchmarking data from multiple industries. After we find matches for your company’s jobs among established market benchmarks, we aggregate the data and determine appropriate base pay and total cash compensation market ranges for each job.

Our pay range and pay administration recommendations are based on your compensation plan strategies and goals, whether they are focused on improving retention, correcting equity issues, or simply establishing fair and equitable pay internally and within the market.

Armed with the latest market data and our own personal experience and expertise, HR Know can help your company cost and administer pay increases for market adjustments, merit increases, equity, and other types of adjustments. We work with you to determine the best methodology for your project and then we take on the number crunching to develop an organized pay adjustment plan to fit you budget. We can also work with your accounting, IT, or other departments to automate implementation and make it as simple as possible.

HR Know develops pay structures to easily align with relevant wage and job markets. We establish the number of pay grades, grade bandwidth (range), midpoint separation, and grade overlap according to your job specifications and levels. In addition to providing market alignment, a good pay structure ensures pay ranges allow sufficient room for wage growth for employees. Our pay structures are designed to support your compensation plan and work with tools to automatically calculate appropriate pay rates based on criteria such as experience, education, and other compensable factors.

HR Know has designed a Pay Calculator tool that can be tailored to support your compensation plan and linked to your internal pay structure. This tool automatically calculates the appropriate position for each employee within the assigned job’s pay range based on your company’s needs, preferred wage progression strategy, and wage market dynamics. Whether you have five or 5,000 employees, your Pay Calculator will be calibrated to provide a consistent, unbiased method for determining pay rates.

ADDITIONAL PAY TOOLS

  • Automated tools to adjust/calibrate Pay Structure based on the changes in ECI published by BLS.
  • Automated tool to modify Pay Grade bandwidth, midpoint separations, and grade overlap based on the changes in labor market trends.
  • Standardized Templates to maintain percent distance between levels within the series.
  • Automated Pay Progression tool allows automated calculation of wage penetration and pay progression within pay grade range based on the changes in labor market (i.e. map different wage/range penetration for hard-to-fill jobs).

HR Know’s team of experts can provide job analysis to determine job value and establish internal equity. We conduct thorough reviews of job classifications and write or edit job descriptions as needed to include minimum qualification requirements, physical requirements, FLSA status, and levels within each job classification or job family. Once a job has been well defined and its value has been determined, it can be assigned to an appropriate pay grade within your internal pay structure.

HR Know has skilled staff with extensive graduate and undergraduate teaching experience. We provide regular training and ongoing support to our clients during every step of our projects, but we can also deliver professional seminars, lectures, or other specialized educational activities to support your company’s needs.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, record keeping and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in federal, state and local governments.

Conducting an FLSA audit and properly documenting exemption decisions provides a safe harbor for organizations.

  • Are your employees properly classified under the FLSA rules and regulations?
  • Will employees be owed overtime for previous work if their status changes from exempt to non- exempt?
  • Are job descriptions currently reflecting the actual duties, responsibilities and educational requirements of the position?

Many companies are challenged in evaluating unique or industry-specific positions through traditional published survey means. Compensation Resources works with these companies to design and administer custom salary surveys to a defined group of peer organizations to obtain compensation about these positions. We utilize various methods (online survey, mail, phone) to disseminate the custom salary survey questionnaire in order to collect data from responding organizations. In all cases, we respect the confidentiality of the client and survey respondents; we provide all survey results in coded format to maintain that confidentiality. No specific information is ever shared with the sponsoring client.

HR Know will apply a systematic and consistent approach to ensure job classes are properly defined, titled, grouped into families, series, and organized between each other in the manner that established internal equity among classes. This is an important step of any classification/compensation project. We will group related jobs with progressively higher levels of impact, knowledge, skills, abilities (competencies and other factors providing for promotional opportunities over time.

A Total Compensation Assessment involves reviewing the compensation plans in place in a particular company with a view towards effectiveness and cost-efficiency. The review should include the following:

  • Analysis of current Compensation Program in relation to the stated Compensation Philosophy and Strategic Business Plan
  • Comparison of compensation practices to peer companies
  • Recommendations covering modification of the current Compensation Program, if necessary
  • Assistance with successful implementation of the new program(s)

HR Know ensures your pay practices are aligned with relevant equal pay laws and best practices so that you can stay ahead of this highly-publicized trend in employment law.

Whether complying with current state and local fair pay laws or trying to get ahead of the equal pay trend, HR Know has the experience to assist your organization with navigating the complexity of compensation legislation.

REDUCE RISK

Employees and applicants will be aware of these highly publicized laws. Implement practices that will reduce your risk as the trend grows and as new legal requirements come into play.

HIRING PRACTICES

HR Know performs an audit of your hiring practices to ensure your application process, interview practices, and new hire offers aren’t putting you at risk.

INTERNAL EQUITY

HR Know ensures pay is being handled consistently, considering the value and complexity of each position in your organization, as well as pay for employees in same pay grades for similar roles.

PAY POLICIES

HR Know performs a thorough review of current pay policies and practices and provides recommendations to simplify, the process of making pay decisions and eliminate potential risks for pay discrepancies.

JOB DESCRIPTIONS

HR Know conducts a job analysis to ensure job descriptions are completed in a manner that aligns with methodologies for compensation and performance management programs

COMPENSATION STRATEGY

HR Know assists with defining your organization’s perspective on the role of compensation—establishing the “why” behind employee pay and creating a framework for consistency.

COMPLIANCE

HR Know assesses your business practices in light of relevant pay equity laws—providing a comprehensive report with findings and recommendations for mitigating risks.