Picking the right compensation management solution for your organization is quite possibly the most important software investment your company will make. In this blog post, discover how PeopleFluent Compensation compares to other common software options.

Managing payments and incentives for hundreds or thousands of employees is no easy task. You need systems and tools that help you streamline your processes, identify potential risks, and ensure your employees’ needs are met while protecting your bottom line. There are many options for a compensation management solution to help you meet these needs, but many don’t provide the flexibility, autonomy, and configurability necessary to respond to your organization’s unique circumstances.

PeopleFluent Compensation is a robust and highly configurable solution that offers in-depth features to help you save time, reduce business costs, and execute sound payment and reward strategies for your enterprise. The chart below outlines how PeopleFluent Compensation’s features compare to all-in-one human resource information systems (HRISs) and general compensation software options.

Let’s delve deeper into each feature below.

1) Off-Cycle Management

In a volatile market, employers are doing what they can to retain top performers, and that includes adjusting some employees’ pay mid-cycle. According to Mercer's March 2024 Compensation Planning Survey, 62% of organizations plan to increase their off-cycle salary adjustments, a 10% jump from the last survey conducted in November 2023. Reasons for off-cycle increases include employee promotions, retention concerns, equity increases, and market adjustments. In a recent article, Michael Citron, a principal and compensation and rewards consultant at Mercer, noted that 63% of organizations claim a primary reason for off-cycle compensation adjustments is to counter competing offers.

This means that your organization will likely need to make off-cycle adjustments in 2024 and beyond, and you’ll need a compensation management system capable of handling these instances without creating problems for your HR and other departments.

Unlike many all-in-one HRISs or general compensation software tools, PeopleFluent Compensation removes the complexities of approving off-cycle payments by automating much of the process. The software can be adapted depending on your organization’s needs so managers or HR departments can approve compensation rewards for individual employees, including:

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

While other solutions offer some degree of off-cycle planning, PeopleFluent Compensation is a robust platform that can be configured to automatically approve amounts or percentages that fall within your company’s pre-established guidelines. This streamlines the planning process and frees up time since it bypasses a manual review.

With PeopleFluent’s compensation management solution, you can enable varied and conditional workflows so your approved software users can choose where payment approvals must take place. If one of your managers wants to reward a direct report with an out-of-cycle referral bonus, an alert system can automatically send that request for extra approvals under conditions set by your organization’s leaders during the software setup.

PeopleFluent Compensation’s robust features also make it easy to individually reward employees for achieving group goals with ad hoc bonuses. You can assign a specific reward amount to a project that everyone on the team receives when the goal is reached. Suppose you prefer to reward employees based on their specific contributions to a project. In that case, you can allow your approved software users to decide how individuals are rewarded based on employee data.

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2) Advanced Configurability

Most compensation planning tools and HRISs provide base pay budget pools for common areas like:

• Merit
• Lump sum
• Promotion
• Additional adjustments

However, these categories only cover basic compensation needs. Many systems don’t offer the configurability or flexibility needed to create additional budget pools, causing unnecessary headaches for your HR teams. It can be especially challenging if you have a complex organizational structure or have multiple business units that allocate their budgets differently. Many HRISs or general compensation software solutions will require you to use a generic “additional adjustments” option to accommodate your requirements if you need to include budget areas like “market” or “equity” in your planning process. This means you can’t break down your budget pools as granularly as you might need to, potentially making it more difficult to achieve your goals.

PeopleFluent Compensation includes three out-of-the-box budget templates, but its robust configurability allows you to create additional fields that aren’t loaded via your HRIS. You can make custom budget buckets and calculations that suit your specific business needs. Another option is to leverage calculations and logic with custom fields based on your unique processes, which can be used within the system modules and for reporting purposes. With this advanced configurability, it’s easy to track your budgets at more granular levels to ensure your funds are being used the way you intended.

3) Total Rewards Management

Employee salaries are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to compensation planning. You also need to account for bonuses, incentives, and benefits. Additionally, employees’ roles within your organization and their geographic working locations must be considered when budgeting for future salary adjustments. Failing to address any of these areas can cause strife among your workforce, leading to lowered morale, decreased productivity, and potentially an increase in staff turnover rates.

Keeping track of so much vital information is no small task, especially for mid-to-large enterprises with many employees. Your compensation solution should make it easy for you to manage these complexities. A total rewards management system like PeopleFluent Compensation lets you centralize your payment and rewards planning. This allows you to create secure, compliant, and sound compensation strategies that help you retain and reward your top talent while protecting your bottom line. Leveraging total rewards management means ensuring compensation strategies across your entire enterprise are consistent, transparent, and fair so you can reward your workforce, enhance productivity, and boost employee morale.

4) Analytics Engine

Robust compensation planning tools will include an analytics engine so you can review your data, identify areas of concern, and take action to mitigate potential risks. Most compensation planning tools, including PeopleFluent Compensation, include out-of-the-box templates for standard reports. These reports are populated with data from your compensation formulas and employee information imported from your HRIS, among other sources. Taking advantage of embedded analytics means saving resources and reducing instances of human error because your HR team doesn’t have to manually sift through employee data to get the information it needs.

One of the best ways to leverage your analytics engine is to conduct a pay equity analysis. PeopleFluent Compensation’s built-in reporting tools allow you to proactively review your pay data so you can detect potential disparities, swiftly uncover why gaps may exist, and take necessary steps to correct any mistakes. You can also export your data to Excel spreadsheets or other reporting tools, which is especially useful when performing pay equity analyses as required by the United States Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), or other regulatory agencies.

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5) Dual Hierarchy Models

With many all-in-one HRISs, planning records are tied directly to live employee data. The problem is that these solutions will continually update your employee data without creating a snapshot worksheet for compensation planning. Continual data collection can lead to confusion and additional work for your administrators. They’ll likely need to make corrections to their planning worksheets since the employee data can update before their plans are complete.

Some all-in-one systems allow you to lock down the information cycle so you can plan without worrying about continuous data changes. The drawback to this is that you can’t see movement between employees and managers, nor can you allow specific data points to be continually updated that may aid in your compensation strategy.

Dual hierarchy models help you build a unique process-specific planning structure that’s definable by your administrators to suit your organizational design. Your data can keep updating during your compensation cycle while also giving administrators a “snapshot” planning worksheet. This way, administrators are free to update individual fields, move employees, and provide additional planning approval hierarchies as needed. PeopleFluent Compensation leverages this dual hierarchy model. The software allows for additional planning approval hierarchies depending on your unique needs.

6) Ability to Modify Formulas

Many all-in-one HRISs don’t allow you to modify your compensation planning formulas. General compensation software may or may not allow this, and those systems that do allow modifications often lack robust features. If you need to update or change your compensation formulas, you’ll likely need to submit a ticket with the vendor and wait for them to make your requested changes.

PeopleFluent Compensation gives you autonomy over your compensation formulas. You have the ability to make modifications without waiting for software support. If you have complex requirements or want assistance with changing your formulas, PeopleFluent also provides high-level support to help you meet your needs.

7) Scenario Modeling

Having a plan is great, but being able to see how that strategy will impact your organization is even better. Scenario modeling lets you see how your compensation programs will affect your business in the short and long term before you execute any changes. HRIS and other general compensation systems may offer some modeling capabilities, but PeopleFluent Compensation’s robust tool lets you build strategic models based on multiple scenarios. You can see the most likely outcomes for each scenario and choose a strategy that will best serve your business needs.

8) Connect With Multiple HRISs

Large enterprises can easily have employees who aren’t on the same HRIS, especially if your organization has business units in different parts of the world. This can lead to major problems when it comes to financial planning. Having employees on different HRISs means you aren’t able to do consistent merit or incentive planning for every worker. This in turn means that you can’t see the full business impact of your budgets or complete full organizational roll-up reporting.

PeopleFluent Compensation lets you avoid these hurdles. The software is agnostic, meaning it can consume data from multiple HRISs so you can plan for all of your employee populations in one system. Planning for every employee under one compensation tool makes it easier for you to have full budgetary and roll-up reporting so you have the clearest possible picture of your organization's financial situation. Another benefit of these integration capabilities is that your employee information can move from PeopleFluent Compensation into and out of any other third-party system you use without compromising your data integrity. Information can move seamlessly back and forth between applications as you see fit, so you can accomplish your planning goals to your unique specifications.

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8) Consultative Partnership

While most HRIS and compensation software providers offer some level of customer support, PeopleFluent takes a robust approach. PeopleFluent Compensation customers benefit from a consultative partnership with in-house, veteran implementation professionals who work alongside you every step of the way to ensure your software runs exactly the way you want it to. Your support team is available to answer any questions you may have about the software and help you find solutions to unforeseen circumstances as they arise. If your business needs change, PeopleFluent works with you to address your new situation and come up with a solution to best serve your organization. While other providers often charge additional fees for high-level customer support, a consultative partnership comes standard with PeopleFluent Compensation, as well as with other PeopleFluent HR solutions.

9) Run Multiple Concurrent Processes

Planning for employees with multiple pay rates can be tricky, and not every compensation solution can give you the flexibility to run multiple concurrent processes. Some compensation systems require you to create separate cycles for planning for additional pay rates. This can be especially cumbersome for mid-to-large enterprise organizations that need to account for hundreds or thousands of employees.

PeopleFluent Compensation’s configurability gives you two ways to add additional pay rates for your employees. You can add more pay rates with custom fields, or you can use an incentive target file to grant increases to an employee’s main, secondary, and even tertiary pay rates. It’s also possible to create additional concurrent employee records for multiple jobs. Whichever method you choose will allow your managers to plan for multiple employee pay rates on the same planning worksheet.

Choose a Robust, Flexible Solution

You have many choices when it comes to your compensation management solution. It’s important to choose a tool that can conform to your unique needs. PeopleFluent Compensation has in-depth features and capabilities that allow you to design, model, and manage your compensation strategy to best suit your business needs.