As inflation rates rise, businesses are looking for ways to help their employees navigate the rising costs of living. Some organizations have responded by reevaluating compensation packages and offering wage increases. Unfortunately, increased salaries can’t always fight the decrease in the dollar’s buying power. Other organizations are choosing to offer employees lump sum payments as a means of financial relief.

Taking advantage of off-cycle payments can help you provide your employees with more financial relief—and it doesn’t have to be complicated! Using highly-configurable software like PeopleFluent Compensation lets you reward employees with referral bonuses, merit rewards, and more—without jumping through unnecessary logistical hoops.

Below are three ways PeopleFluent Compensation helps you make off-cycle payments.

1) Customizable Solutions for Individual Circumstances

Each role in your business deserves a well-developed compensation plan. Every department has something unique to contribute, and all of these positions require varying sets of skills and labor to make the organization successful. Your compensation strategy should be carefully planned to reflect all of your business complexities.

The intricacies of payment planning make a blanket-approved ad hoc bonus highly unlikely. Doing so could lead to complications in your overall compensation design. That said, you still want to ensure that you’re rewarding employees appropriately for their efforts—regardless of the perceived complications in that process. Mitigating inflation is just one of many reasons why an organization would want to offer out-of-cycle rewards.

PeopleFluent Compensation software removes the complexities of approving out-of-cycle payments by automating much of the process. Depending on your organization’s needs, the software can be adapted so managers or HR departments can approve compensation rewards for individual employees. These rewards can take on a variety of forms, such as:

• Incremental salary increases
• Shift differentials
• Spot and team rewards
• Referral bonuses
• Retention equity grants

The software can be configured to automatically approve amounts or percentages that fall within your company’s pre-established guidelines. This streamlines the process and frees up your time since it bypasses a manual review.

You can also enable varied and conditional workflows. Approved software users can choose where payment approvals must take place. Suppose a manager wants to reward their employee with an out-of-cycle referral bonus. In that case, an alert system can automatically send that request for extra approvals under conditions set by your organization’s leaders during the software setup.

Whether the request is instantly approved or needs a review, our compensation tool saves everyone time by automating many processes, so your employees can potentially get their rewards faster.

READ OUR COMPENSATION SUCCESS STORIES | ‘PeopleFluent Compensation: Customer Spotlight Flipbook’

2) Project-Based Rewards Without That “Group Project” Feel

Sometimes you’ll want to reward an entire team’s hard work with an ad hoc bonus, but just like a school group project, assessing each person’s contribution to a team effort can be challenging. Rather than always needing to pay each team member the same amount, PeopleFluent Compensation lets you customize how you reward each contributor.

Within our software application, your organization’s group rewards are labeled according to the project’s name. Each person involved in a particular project is listed, and the approved software users can decide how team members are rewarded.

In some scenarios, you might want each team member to receive an equal payment. In this case, a dollar amount can be assigned to the project itself, meaning each team member receives the same reward upon project completion. When the reward is approved, everyone will receive the same payment.

In other situations, you may choose to reward individuals based on their specific contributions to a project’s success. Although each team member plays a part in completing the project, it’s possible that some people contribute more than others. Employee data can be used alongside the compensation software to help inform your rewards decisions. However you choose to recognize employee contributions to a group effort, each team member’s payment is approved individually and confidentially.

KEEP READING | ‘How Data About Your High Performers Is the Key to Fairer Compensation & Greater Retention’

3) User-Friendly Navigation

Managing compensation for so many employees can get overwhelming without easy-to-navigate tools. That’s why PeopleFluent Compensation is designed to be user-friendly with clearly defined fields for each reward request. When managers request a pay increase or bonus for an employee, they’re presented with a list of options to explain the reason for the additional compensation.

PeopleFluent’s software makes it easy to defend an off-cycle payment with data visualization. Users are able to incorporate employee analytics to inform their decisions, including the previous rewards and compensation history for that specific employee.

LEARN MORE ABOUT DATA | ‘8 Data Visualizations Available With PeopleFluent Performance, Compensation, and Succession’

The Bottom Line: Compensation Software Simplifies the Payment Process

Whether your organization is trying to mitigate inflation struggles or reward exceptional performance, at some point you’ll be faced with an off-cycle compensation request. Although these processes can be intricate, they don’t have to be confusing or difficult to understand. Using a software option like PeopleFluent Compensation takes the guesswork out of these payments, so you can remain transparent and fair with your compensation payments.

MAKE COMPENSATION YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE | Check out the PeopleFluent Compensation Product Sheet​