Plastec Company - Strategic Compensation

Strategic compensation includes several elements that need to be examined when putting together a total compensation plan. Many of them play a large role for employees to decide whether to join or stay at a Plastec such as health and wellness benefits, time off, retirement benefits and more. The challenge for anyone designing a compensation and benefit system is to find one-size that may fit a large variety of needs.

Surveys

Plastec can use a prepackaged survey done by any number of reputable survey groups such as the US Dept of Labor (Occupational Compensation Survey Program), Economic Research Institute, William H. Mercer, Inc., SHRM, or professional, trade and industrial associations. The problems with information obtained this way are difficulty in obtaining a proper job match, data needs to be integrated with internal pay structure, and the sampling must be similar in size and product.

A better solution would be to commission a survey (internally or externally) so that the Plastec Company can specifically correlate the information it receives and how it will be used. This could be done regionally or industry-wide. There are big challenges to this approach which need to be addressed at the start. Plastec must clearly define the scope of the survey, how it will classify the specific jobs, identify the proper labor market, selection of the respondents, the kinds of data it receives, determine if the survey is in compliance with legislative mandates, and select which survey method will work best. According to Henderson, in “Compensation Management in a Knowledge Based World,” a Compensation Survey takes into account these factors and more. The Compensation Survey asks the participant to specifically indicate the following elements in total compensation:

- How much if any sick leave is offered

- 401K plan contributions

- Monthly cost for single/family membership in the insurance plans

- Cafeteria plan option

- Labor unions

- Merit review...