Compensation Plans

A comprehensive compensation plan is critical to attracting, recruiting, and retaining qualified employees. An effective plan will help ensure internal and external pay equity issues and assist your organization in meeting strategic objectives.

Designing and administering a compensation plan can be difficult and time consuming. Washington Employers' experienced staff can guide you through the process or prepare all or part of your plan for you and assist with the implementation and administration.

Job Descriptions: The first and most critical step in designing a compensation plan. Job descriptions must be accurate in order to correctly evaluate each job, obtain accurate market pricing, determine job worth, and develop pay ranges. Job descriptions are also a tool for recruitment, selection, legal and regulatory compliance, training and developing employees, and communicating performance criteria.
Job Evaluation: Washington Employers uses a systematic process for determining and comparing the relative value of jobs inside your organization. Each job is evaluated to determine the degree of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions in relation to other positions within the organization. This method establishes internal equity in your pay administration program.
Market Pricing: Correct market pricing ensures that your organization remains competitive during the hiring process and aids in employee retention issues. Market pricing data is available from Washington Employers from surveys conducted by us as well as other regional and national salary and benefit surveys.
Salary Structure: The salary structure for your compensation plan is built from your job evaluation and market pricing. We develop a salary range for each position in you organization based on the market value of the job. These ranges are an effective means to enable your management team to offer equitable wages and maintain control of your compensation plan.
Administration and Communication: Washington Employers can assist in the yearly administration of your compensation program. We provide on-going preparation of job descriptions, job evaluation, market pricing and updates to your salary structure. Proper communication of your compensation plan to employees makes them feel valued; builds trust; reinforces the business philosophy, culture and values; and may improve business results.

For more information, please contact one of Washington Employers' compensation professionals.