Compensation Controls

What are “Compensation Controls”?

These are configurations that admins can set up to enforce controls on “Review” actions for employees based on column values, often referred to as hard and soft stops or hard and soft flags.

Here are some use-cases that can easily be solved with the use of Compensation Controls!

• Ex. A - Want to prevent a manager from entering a Salary Raise more than a 15% increase?

• Ex. B - Want to require a manager to provide justification for an increase over 7%?

• Ex. C - Want to ensure employees in New York get at least a 4% increase but employees in San Francisco get at least a 3% increase?

• Ex. D - Want to prevent managers from entering in equity for employees not eligible for that increase?

Ex. A.

If employee adjustments go outside of the configured bounds, the Compensation Planning product can apply and enforce limits on the worksheet submission or “Review” actions.

Now, admins are able to quickly and easily set flexible constraints around the compensation changes that planners can make, to drive more equitable outcomes at their organization and reduce manual overhead towards the end of the cycle.

Admins no longer need to go in and “correct” employee comp changes that fall well outside company accepted bounds (whether that is in terms of budget, recommendations, or bands), saving hours of manual work.

Companies are actually able to enforce compensation rules across all levels of the organization, leading to better adherence to equitable compensation outcomes (via hard stops).

Similarly, companies are able to track and reference reasons for significant deviation from expectations for compensation adjustments better into the future because planners can now be forced to submit reasons for those changes (via soft stops).

Hard Stops

A hard stop is the equivalent of preventing a planner from submitting certain adjustments that are outside of the configured range.

For example, planners are not allowed to go above band max for a set of employees.

Soft Stops

A soft stop is the equivalent of requiring a justification reason from a planner when submitting adjustments outside of an acceptable range.

For example, planners must submit a justification reason if they try and save a compensation change that puts an employee at greater than the recommended increase.

Setting up Compensation Controls

Add Compensation Control Actions to Employee Groups

To set up a Compensation Control, an admin must first set up an Employee Group that identifies which employees the control should apply to. See Employee Groups for more information about how to create Employee Groups.

1. Select an Employee Group from the side panel of the Employee Groups tab (or create a new group).

   

2. Add a Compensation Control action to the group after the filters for the group match the desired criteria.

   

3. Preview the popup that planners see if they trigger a Compensation Control.

   

What a Planner Sees

For Hard Stops

Assume a compensation control is set up with the following conditions:

Hard stop for all employees with a Compa Ratio less than 0.9 or greater than 1.1

The planner will not be able to submit their proposed compensation change since the New Compa Ratio is below the threshold set of 0.9. They will see a dialog that explains each reason that they are blocked from submitting.

If a planner tries to bulk save/review then they will see each employee and each reason that blocks them from doing so. They can then quickly find these employees and resolve them.

For Soft Stops

Assume a compensation control is set up with the following conditions (same as above but soft stop):

Soft stop for all employees with a Compa Ratio less than 0.9 or greater than 1.1

The planner will have to submit a justification reason along with their proposed compensation change since the New Compa Ratio is below the threshold set of 0.9. They will see a dialog that explains each reason that is triggering the soft stop. This justification reason will be visible in the comment history for the employee for all other planners.

If a planner tries to bulk save/review then they will see each employee and each reason that requires justification and they will be blocked from the bulk save until these conditions are resolved. They can then quickly find these employees and resolve them.

If hard stops and soft stops are triggered at the same time, the hard stop will take precedence.

Reviewing Soft Stops

If a previous planner saves a change that triggers a soft stop, a planner later in the approval chain can easily review that.

First, they can filter for these employees by filtering by the relevant employee group.

Then, if you click into the history of the employee, you can see the specific justification that the previous planner gave.

FAQs

What happens if I change compensation controls during an active cycle?

For now, compensation controls are only enforced client side, which means that all planners will need to refresh their pages to have the updated rules apply. We highly recommend avoiding changes to employee groups with compensation controls during an active cycle.

Note: you can always audit employees later in the process by using the employee group filters.

If a planner triggers a soft stop earlier in the approval chain and submits a justification reason for an employee, will a planner later in the chain also have to submit a justification reason when reviewing that employee?

A planner will only need to submit a separate justification reason if they change a field related to the compensation control. For example, if a compensation control is set up based on the salary increase amount, a planner late in the chain will only need to submit a justification reason if they change the salary increase amount. If they only change other fields, they will not trigger the justification reason.

If a planner triggers a soft stop when reviewing an employee and submits a justification reason, then makes a new change and reviews again, will they have to submit a justification reason again?

They will only have to submit a justification reason again if they are changing a field related to the compensation control. If they are changing other, unrelated fields, they will not trigger the justification reason.

What happens if multiple stops are triggered at the same time for an employee?

If multiple soft stops are triggered, each of those soft stop reasons will show up in the modal. If a hard stop and a soft stop are triggered together, only the hard stop will show up in the modal until that is resolved.