Hr Comparison

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the traditional Human Resource (HR) functions is determining employees’ compensation. In modern organisations, with variety of costly employee benefit programmes, wage incentive programmes and structured pay scale, the compensation task is even more difficult and challenging for an HR specialist. Employee compensation can affect their productivity and their tendency to stay with the organisation. The HR manager must ensure that the compensation policy does not lead to high staff turnover. Employees need for income and their desire to be fairly treated by the organisation make developing HR programmes important for Human Resource Department (HRD).

Compensation of people at work has become one of the most demanding problems facing management in South Africa (SA) today. In the past, payment for work performed was simple and straightforward. Paying for work not performed, such as vacation was simply unheard by the management. For most parts the employer displayed a take it or leave it attitude when making pay offers to employees. Today the almost automatic increasing of employees’ salaries every 12 months or so is common practice. Although thing has change substantially, new and better ways of compensating people are needed in Human Resource Management (HRM).

To understand the utility of broader construct for considering military and civilian pay comparability, it is necessary to consider how military service differs from employment in the civilian sector (Asch & Warner, 1994). A primary goal of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) compensation is to enable its military to meet its manning objective for the force size, composition, and wartime capability. To attain these objectives, compensation must be appropriately structured to attract, retain, and motivate personnel at a reasonable cost, even when national security goal are changing. Key challenge facing SANDF manpower and compensation managers is how its military...