COMPENSATION & BENEFIT

Certified Compensation & Benefit Manager

Certified Compensation & Benefit Manager

Introduction

Compensation and benefits are usually considered as an important factor to improve quality of employment and are not limited to salary, wages and allowances only. In fact, the compensation and benefit system also includes other benefits like vacations plans, transport or phone facility as well as incentives such as prizes, bonuses, etc. (Herod, 2009). In today's rapidly changing business environment, many companies are now coming up with competitive salaries and benefits to attract and retained skilled persons (Biswas, 2012). Emergence of new technologies, business mergers and acquisitions are also creating a wide space or requirements for different type of new as well as existing skills in many companies. This, in turn, has made the condition of job market very competitive. People, on the other hand, are also looking for job as well as facing a tough competition from people with similar education, experience and skills (Herod, 2009). This situation is now forcing many people to enhance their level of education or get specialised education in relation to their particular field just to compete well in the job market and achieve their desired job.

No doubt, the objective for the compensation and benefit system is the reduction of turnover and absenteeism, raising the moral and strengthening security (Biswas, 2012). However, establishment or management of reward structure is also a critical job of any human resource department. In addition, the changing business and technological environment also require companies to hire more people with updated and more recent skills. Similarly, there are number of people who appear for a single HR job with almost similar or generalised education or knowledge.

The Certified Compensation and Benefit Manager (CCBM) programme is a specialised program in the field of HR that not only helps companies to establish more attractive compensation and benefit plans but the CCBM program also enables HR professional to improve their knowledge and skills to compete in the job market. In fact, the major benefit of this programme goes to the individuals as it is very essential for HR professionals to prepare a well-defined compensation plan comprising higher basic wages, gain sharing or bonus system, employee old age benefits and other allowances such as medical reimbursement, etc.

This programme focuses on various compensable factors that are categorised into three main groups including, Skills-based, Responsibility-based and Effort-based compensable factors. In this paper, the emphasis will be given on Skills-based compensable factors as they are important factors to consider when creating a job description and requirements.

Compensable Factors

Researchers have identified three main categories for compensable factors that play an important role in the development of any company in terms of employees' job performance and grading. The CCBM programme categorise the compensable factors in three main groups:

Skills based: includes experience, education and knowledge

Responsibility based: work complexity, responsibility, supervision, authority, scope & relationships, process

Effort based: mental and visual

Figure-1: Compensable Factors

In addition, all factors shown in Figure-1 can also be seen as essential elements of an employee's job that also allow company to ...