Workscape/HCI Survey Shows Room for Improvement When It Comes to Supporting Documentation for Compensation Decisions

MARLBOROUGH, MA--(Marketwire - June 1, 2009) - Workscape, Inc., a leading provider of outsourced benefits and talent management solutions, and the Human Capital Institute (HCI), a professional association and think-tank advancing the science of strategic talent management, today unveiled details from their follow-up research into what the future might hold for executive and high performer compensation, including gaining insight into organizations' current methods for paying bonuses, managing bonus compensation and connecting pay to performance.

Based on "virtual roundtable" interviews with 10 respected thought leaders from across the country as well as a survey of HR professionals from 129 organizations, the survey results were released at the WorldatWork Total Rewards 2009 Conference and Exhibition in Seattle today. The responses showed that many organizations are good at communicating how bonus awards are computed (65% of respondents' companies share this information with employees). The majority of surveyed companies also actively share employees' progress against their goals -- only about 1 in 5 fails to communicate this information.

Yet, when it comes to the capabilities necessary to access and provide individual compensation plans and supporting documentation, the surveyed companies did not fare as well. Only half of the organizations stated that they have an "easily accessible history for all incentives and the decisions that were made to award them," and 34% stated it would take days or weeks to put together documentation supporting each employee's compensation plan. Tellingly, many (more than 40%) stated it would require at least some manual effort to put together this level of documentation.

"The results of our research are a bit disconcerting -- while many companies know how to calculate bonuses based on performance, many cannot provide the corresponding documentation -- at least not without considerable manual labor," stated David Turetsky, Workscape's Director of Talent Management Strategy. "In our experience, many of these reporting challenges can be addressed with a comprehensive, automated total rewards solution supported by a robust compensation planner that can track annual performance review-based salary increases and rewards as well as off-cycle compensation changes. With the appropriate programs in place, employers can more easily identify, reward and motivate top performers, drive higher performance, and strategically deal with unanticipated business fluctuations."

Since the company's inception, Workscape's solutions have included a complete array of outsourced benefit administration solutions and services designed to improve engagement, simplify the enrollment and administration process for employees and employers alike and, ultimately, to help reduce overall benefits costs. With Workscape's award-winning enterprise compensation planning solution, Workscape Compensation Planner, companies gain access to powerful, easy-to-use tools for making more informed and equitable compensation plan decisions -- both during focal planning periods and throughout the year.

Workscape will demonstrate its Total Rewards solutions -- including its award-winning talent management software-as-a-service (SaaS) and its outsourced benefits administration offering -- at the WorldatWork Total Rewards 2009 Conference and Exhibition in Seattle. The conference held its opening reception on May 31; exhibits will open on June 1 and continue through June 2. Workscape is Gold Sponsor of this event and will exhibit in booth No. 703. For more information about this event, please visit http://www.worldatwork.org/seattle2009.

The full text of the Workscape/HCI survey is available for download from www.workscape.com/HCIsurvey.

About Workscape

Workscape is unique in its ability and demonstrated domain expertise in addressing the talent management, benefits administration and employee communication challenges of hundreds of organizations and millions of workers across the country and across the globe. For the past decade, Workscape has been delivering Web-based software and services that are proven to help organizations reduce healthcare costs, improve adherence to compensation budgets and ensure alignment between employee activities and corporate goals. As a result, our employee-centric approach has consistently helped organizations to achieve the highest return on their greatest workforce expenditures: healthcare benefits and employee compensation. For more information about Workscape, visit www.workscape.com or call 888-605-9620.