Strategies And Practices For Remuneration, Benefits, And Rewards At CGI

Understanding the Existing Statutory Award’s Suitability for Supporting the Growth and Establishment of CUAP

The existing statutory award in modern awards includes remuneration, training opportunities and others (Modern awards 2018). However, in the case study, it is mentioned that modern award serves CGI adequately but it cannot satisfy the needs and impact on performance of the employees of CUAP. Thus, the modern awards are not suitable for the employees of CUAP and these awards are not efficient to improve the performance of employees at a higher level. Different solutions can be forwarded that can help to encourage the staff to increase their performance, which can help in growth and establishment of CUAP. One-off reward is a solution, which can be incentivized to increase performance of employees in CUAP. This includes giving them recognition by giving them a prize for their effort. This can be a prize bucket, which will contain different gift cards and a financial reward certificate (Stadnicka and Sakano 2017, 80). A regular daily win announcement is another reward that can be forwarded to employees for increasing their motivation to perform well. The employees of all departments can be given a certain target and bonuses can be offered daily upon achievement of the target. This type of one-off rewards like discount cards and gift cards are provided by Woolworths, which is an Australian retail firm, which helps to increase their motivation and performance (Woolworths staff discount card 2018).

Existing statutory award includes training, relocation, bonuses, and wages. However, CUAP is a new business wing of this company, which will focus on business to business model. Hence, to establish this new business it is essential to motivate employees by providing alternative rewards for boosting their performance. So, another essential solution can be proposed for the employees of CUAP, which is matching rewards to the employees. In this solution, the management of the firm can let the employees choose rewards, which they can receive after a good performance. Sometimes it happens that employees do not like the rewards they achieve or it does not have any use to them. Giving the freedom of choosing rewards that increase their engagement and required performance and behavior can be achieved from them (Korir and Kipkebut 2016, 39).  The existing statutory awards are not suitable because employees will have to give more effort to establish this new business model. For example, the sales staff will visit customers’ premises to sell new policies and renewals. For boosting employees, it is essential to bring variance in reward structure thus business can be established and growth of CUAP can be achieved.

Understanding how to Address the Gender Pay Gap

Gender pay gap is considered illegal and it must be minimized in CUAP with effective strategies. As per the Workplace relations Act 1996, employers are legally bound to pay equal value and remuneration to both male and female employees. Firstly, this company needs to introduce a policy to ensure equal pay for employees. As mentioned by De Gieter, Sara, and Joeri Hofmans (2015, 208), salary structure must be designed based on the designation and job roles and it must be done through avoiding gender inequality. Gender cannot be considered as a parameter for designing salary structure. Tasks must be distributed based on the ability of employees and all genders must be treated equally in terms of promotion and payments. This policy must include guidelines for leaders and managers to treat employees of all genders equally. This action can help in providing equal opportunity and equal payment to skilled employees of all genders. Secondly, the management of CUAP needs to design salary of employees based on their position and job role. Advanced HR software can be used for design and covey different segments of salary for different designations. This kind of software helps to calculate compensation based on numerical data of employees and it can help to avoid gender bias. Segmentation of salary must be done based on the requirements of the position and compensation must be given based on performance and genuine needs after verifying the cause.

Thirdly, HRM department of the CUAP needs to ensure a fair hiring process to close the gender pay gap within this company. During the selection process, there must not be any negotiation regarding salary between candidates and employers. Brady and others (2015, 108) have mentioned that salary-related negotiation influence gender biases in many companies. Employers get an opportunity to set salaries based on their personal beliefs and opinions. It is important to offer a predetermined salary structure for a position to all candidates free from gender biases. Offering a fair salary to candidates will make them feel secure to work in this organization. Fourthly, transparency must be maintained within the company to close the gender pay gap.  This company must encourage female employees to contribute equally to achieve business goals. Female, male and third gender employees must get equal opportunities for promotion. They must get the opportunity of being leaders based on their professional ability. This approach can help CUAP to minimize the gender pay gap and it can also help in increasing job satisfaction in employees.    

Using the Total Reward Model of Armstrong to Identify Rewards that will be Used in the CUAP Remuneration Plan

According to Armstrong, total reward includes different components, which include both financial and non-financial (White 2016, 23-25). In CUAP remuneration plan needs to be different for different departments like sales, claims, adjusters and professional services.

The sales employees can be provided with basic financial rewards like higher range of salary according to their efficiency and other bonuses. This can help them to perform effectively and increase their engagement (Mone and London 2018, 12-13). On another hand, non-financial rewards for these employees include prizes, gift cards upon achievement of sales target. This can boost the engagement of employees and motivate them to achieve more.

The claims employees perform tasks like managing claims of customers for which they have to visit a customer’s premises.  Tangible rewards that can be offered to them are salaried range upon skills, share of revenue and bonuses. On the other hand, intangible rewards that can be offered include providing an inclusive environment that promotes diversity. This can help to increase satisfaction rate of customers by offering service through representatives who are from the same culture of customers. Organizing training programs can help to increase work engagement of employees in claims department. As opined by Zwick (2015, 142), organizing training helps in improving skills of employees, which ultimately impacts on growth of business.

In the case study, it is mentioned that limited experience of adjusters is the problem that impacts the process of investigation and negotiating settlements with commercial customers.  Hence, for this group of employees, training, and career development opportunities need to be included as a non-financial reward. This is an essential reward that can help to increase their ability to handle negotiation process with commercial business customers. Training courses on negotiation needs to be included in the plan. Flexible working hours are another non-financial reward that can help the employees to acquire more learning (De Menezes and Kelliher 2017, 1063). Tangible rewards include monetary rewards, a well-designed leave policy as instructed by government modern awards and others.

The professional service employee contains a team of specialists, which will help CUAP to operate successfully and achieve growth. Hence, they need to be satisfied and motivated to improve their performance. Non-financial rewards like opportunity to mitigate gaps in performance through performance appraisal can be provided to them. Hence, error-free operations in accounts, HRM and other departments can be gained (Georgiadis and Pitelis 2016, 415). The appraisal system needs to be conducted in CUAP twice in a financial year. Moreover, recognition, training, increasing belongingness of employees are some other non-financial rewards that must be included in the plan. Besides, financial rewards include, monetary incentives, higher salaries for skilled employees to retain them and bonuses on good performance must be offered.

Strategic Rewards to be Pursued by the Organization

The strategic goals of a company can be achieved within minimum time with the support of employees. As mentioned by Stachova, Stacho, and Bartáková (2015, 267), remuneration system and other benefits can support achievement of strategic goals. For example, strategic goal of increasing sales performance can be pursued by CUAP. Achievement of this goal can help this new enterprise to gradually increase their revenue generation. They can introduce a bonus system for target sales performance. As per the case study, the project manager has decided to maintain only field sales. However, it can be difficult for existing sales employees to comply with this change. On the other hand, it can be found that this action can help this company to achieve the above mentioned strategic goal. Employees can show interest in field if they get attractive bonus on-target sales.

Another strategic goal is to develop a good internal communication within this company and persuasion of this goal can help this company to develop teams within CUAP. As this company has decided to reallocate existing employees, difficulties can be there between members of new departments and teams. However, developing good internal communication allows employers to get collaborative effort from the workforce to achieve business goals (Jacobs, Wantao and Chavez 2016, 68).  This company can announce rewards for performance of teams. This kind of benefit can positively influence employees to cooperate and work collaboratively to win the reward as a team. On the other hand, CUAP management will be able to establish their new brand easily with this approach.

Increasing customer satisfaction within the next two years is another strategic goal that can be pursued by the CUAP. this company has lost its reputation and currently fighting for survival as per the case study. At this point, the main aim of CUAP must focus on increasing customer base and the level of customer satisfaction. They can introduce a policy to add a certain amount every month with remuneration of their employees if they succeed to satisfy customers. This amount can be determined based on the feedback given by customers that have been handled by individual employees. This change in the remuneration can be considered as an influencer that can help individual employees to provide their best effort to help CUAP to achieve the mentioned strategic goal.

Hence, it can be understood that remuneration and benefits can support this new enterprise to achieve strategic goals within minimum time.   

Sales position evaluation plan

The sales position of CUAP can be evaluated by the ranking method of job evaluation. This method allows HR managers to rank job positions based on their importance within the organization. Different positions of sales department of CUAP need to be evaluated and ranked according to tasks associated with these positions. This approach can help to evaluate job positions for pay purposes (Koskinen 2017, 163). After arranging the position from high to low, remuneration can be decided. Firstly, this organization needs to reallocate sales staff in different categories of sales workforce. After that, based on their work and ability salary can be designed. As per the case study, sales staffs are assuming that they are going to perform the same job role. They must be informed of their new positions, remuneration, roles, and responsibility shortly.

Claims position evaluation plan

Claims workers perform tough job of management of customers’ claims, which require skills and physical efforts because in CUAP “customer partnership model is followed. For evaluating their jobs for pay purposes, planning needs to be done through grading method. As said by Kahya (2018, 720), planning of job evaluation through grading method can be done through job grades or classes. Employees who will be included in the class need to perform same job and must have the same amount of skill. Thus, no discrimination can be taken place while preparing the remuneration plan for the employees of claims department of CUAP.  

Adjusters’ position evaluation plan

As per the case study, approximately 20 adjusters are required in CUAP and existing adjusters do not have sufficient knowledge and experience of dealing with negotiation and business-to-business customers. Point-factor method can be undertaken by this company to evaluate the job position of adjuster department for pay purposes. This method allows determining job factors that add value to a position. Job factors of this department can be segmented into different groups including experience, skills, effort, and responsibility.

Professional services evaluation plan

The employees of professional services perform different complex work, which must be error-free. Hence, factor comparison method can be adopted to evaluate positions for pay purposes.  As said by Morgeson and others (2019, 12-14), factor comparison method helps to create an evaluation plan according to skills, working conditions, responsibilities and effort of employees. These factors need to be assigned with dollar values in the plan. Pay in this case of CUAP needs to be distinguished according to this plan. For example, the employees of HRM have to perform critical operations and they have to give more effort. Thus they deserve a greater salary as compared to others.

Policy for designing the base pay, in this case, can help the managers of CUAP by providing guidelines for compensation. Managers can follow the guidelines to develop a pay structure, which is made at the highest level of the organization. As mentioned by Greene (2018, 23-25), base pay design includes some policies like minimum and maximum levels of pay, relationship among the levels of pay in general and division of total compensation.

HR needs to play an effective role in the design of base pay structure. In the first step, they need to gather background information, which can help the decision-makers to frame a compensation policy. Compensation policy in CUAP for sales staff is to motivate employees to perform at the best of their competencies. For claims and professional services, compensation policy will be to retain the key talents and offering rewards to high-performing employees. Moreover, the compensation policy for adjusters to design the base pay that attracts talented people to join them with more skills because in the case study it is mentioned that adjusters of CUAP have inadequate experiences. Other background information that must be collected in this design includes job descriptions, current compensation programs, work locations, and employee census.  

The policy of base pay design needs to be fixed by analyzing the external market data that need to be prepared by collecting base pay data from other trade organizations. As opined by Kuvaas and others (2016, 667), data from other professional organizations and trading companies can help to devise a policy for designing base pay. However, it is essential to select appropriate policy for each of the segments. Sales staff in this organization will perform an essential task of selling services. This can help them to earn revenue and establish the business properly. Thus, it is essential to motivate them and gain maximum performance from them. Moreover, they will also work outside the office premises and travel to the customers. Hence, while designing their base pay, main policy will be to motivate them. On the other hand, in the case study, it is mentioned that “Research indicated that business and commercial customers felt more “attached” to their insurers when they could deal with them face to face”. Hence, high performance is required from claims staff. Besides, professional service employees manage all internal operations, which is very essential for company growth. Thus, base pay design policy for them will be to retain key talent.  Adjustors perform an essential task of negotiating. Hence, in future talented employees need to be recruited to gain competitive advantage. Thus the policy for them is to attract key talents.

Person based pay structure allows employers to pay additional amounts to an employee based on specific knowledge, skills, and competencies. This kind of pay structure focuses on personality traits, instead of job roles (Fulmer and Shaw 2018, 939). Several advantages are associated with this pay structure. It can be used as a motivational tool within a company. It influences employees to develop and improve professional skills. They provide their best effort to contribute to the achievement of organizational goals. The culture of self-improvement can be reinforced by a person based pay structure. This kind of pay structure helps employees to focus on continuous learning and self-improvement. This aspect is good for the concerned organization as they get the opportunity to have employee support to beat their competitors and occupy maximum marketplace. On the other hand, Shields and Dolle-Samuel (2015, 202) have mentioned that person based pay structure helps employers to retain talented employees. Corporate transparency can be maintained with the help of this pay structure.

Person-based pay structure is appropriate for the sales division of CUAP. the project manager has a new model for this division. It has been decided that this division will focus on only field sales only model. It means that all sales employees must have knowledge and skills to sell more insurance by visiting customers’ premises. However, existing employees do not know about this decision and they are expecting that they are going to play their existing job role. When they will get to know this managerial decision, they may leave their jobs for a better opportunity or can show reluctant to cooperate. In this situation, this company needs to introduce a person-based payment structure within this division. It will be able to encourage employees to use their skills to survive in terms of field sales. On the other hand, they may show interest in training and development of new skills to help this organization to meet their business objectives (Bercu 2017, 1340). It will be beneficial for CUAP as they will get the support of their existing sales staff in selling more insurance to business-to-business consumers. The person-based pay structure in the sales division can motivate employees to face and mitigate challenges. Hence, this pay structure can be included within the remuneration plan for CUAP.

It can be expected that this plan can help the CUAP management to reallocate their existing staff in their new venture and will be able to ensure success. Sufficient remunerations and both financial and non-financial rewards help in retaining skilled employees (George 2015, 102). As this company is focusing on B2B model, they needs to retail and train employees to get success. One other core outcomes are that this remuneration plan can help them to motivate employees to learn new skills and deliver their best performance. According to Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, humans gradually learn from their practical work and mistakes. Existing members are not aware of the plans of project managers and they need constant motivation to cope up with new challenges. This plan is potent enough to support motivation to staff and staff retention.

Another core outcome is about ensuring skill development of employees to meet business objectives. As CUAP is taking all new approaches, it must ensure continuous learning of employees. According to behavioral theory, people learn from their surroundings by interacting with others. This company is setting team rewards to encourage people to work in teams. This aspect will help employees to interact with others within their respective divisions and learn new things (Powell 2016, 141). On the other hand, this organization will get collaborative effort from employees, which can support them to meet business objectives.

This plan can help to ensure the core outcome of increasing sales performance. Incentives on target sales have been included in this plan and this aspect can help the employer to motivate employees to provide their best effort to sell insurances. Providing training and other non-financial rewards to employees have been added within the remuneration plan. These rewards may help in retaining talented sales employees and improve sales performance. Employees will understand that they can get the reward by ensuring dedicated work (Dutton and Kleiner 2015, 23). This approach can help to get the above-mentioned core outcome.

CUAP management can apply both extrinsic and intrinsic way of motivational practices for motivating their employees. Different techniques like JCM (Job characteristics model) can be implemented to motivate employees intrinsically. It can be seen in the case study that sales and claims department employees perform monotonous job of handling customers for selling service and managing claims of customers. As said by Raziq and Maulabakhsh (2015, 718), boring and monotonous job can be disastrous to employee motivation. This technique can be implemented through redesigning job characteristics, which has an impact on outcomes. The management of CUAP can interchange employees of sales and claims allocate various tasks to employees that can help to increase variety in their skills. Moreover, the tasks should be properly identified to them, which can give them a clear vision of achievable. Besides, the significance of performing the tasks needs to be explained to them. For example, the impact of performing the tasks at their skill level is required. Autonomy can be given to them to perform the tasks and feedback can be given. The employees of sales and claims need to be given autonomy to work independently that can help to increase their confidence level. However, supervisors need to provide feedback on recent performances to mitigate gaps. Thus, their psychological state of mind can be improved like experience and knowledge. Hence, high performance and high satisfaction of employees can be achieved.  

Extrinsic motivation comes from senior management like supervisors and managers. As stated by Kuvaas and others (2017, 244), extrinsic motivation refers to the behavior of employees, which is driven by different external rewards like recognition, money, and grades. The employees who provide professional services require extrinsic motivation. The HRM staff, legal and regulatory staff of professional service department can be motivated through recognition, hike in salary annually and promotion to higher positions. However, extrinsic motivations like year-end bonuses, recognition of good performance need to be provided to employees of every department, this can boost their motivation level and CUAP can achieve growth. Besides, employee turnover can also be avoided in future as good relationships established through the help of extrinsic motivational techniques.

In CUAP, performance management is very essential because this can help to increase productivity of the company and gain a competitive advantage shortly. In the upcoming three years, performance management goals and plans for this firm are:

Goal 1: Development of people

Enhancing the skills and competencies of employees can help to increase performance and desired company objectives can be achieved. As stated by Chu and others (2016, 555), skills of employees can be improved and performance gaps can be mitigated through regular mentoring. The employees of CUAP are new in the B2B model. Moreover, the department of sales and claims new models likes field sales model and customer partnership model. In the first year, these employees need to be mentored by experienced managers. Moreover, in the initial three years, employees need to achieve constant support from managers. Managers must explain to them regarding employees’ current role and what is expected from them. Besides, training programs can be conducted once a year to enhance their product selling capability and problem-solving ability. Different skills like communication skills must be improved to satisfy business customers properly and gain profit.

Goal 2: Rewarding employees equally

This is another essential goal, which can help to increase motivation level of employees. This goal is related to all employees in every department. The managers of CUAP need to be fair and impartial while distributing rewards to employees. Scheuer (2016, 156) stated that an equitable way of reward distribution helps to maintain a good relationship between employees and management and increases their loyalty. In the case, it is stated that many competitors are fuelling rumors to poach talented employees. Hence, further discrimination during reward distribution can cause employee turnover that can impact on growth of CUAP. The extrinsic rewards like bonuses on performances, recognition, and promotion needs to be provided without any discrimination, for this, a set of policies need to be framed in early months, which must be circulated through the company website.

Goal 3: Increasing and driving overall performance of the organization

This can be done by connecting the performance of employees with the mission and vision of the organization. In the first three years, regular meetings need to be conducted to increase understanding of employees regarding the mission and objectives of this new business. Thus, they can align their performance with company goals. Moreover, the supervisors need to explain job roles vary minutely that can help employees to understand what they are going to contribute through their work.

Contingent rewards are motivation-based and it allows employees to encourage employees to deliver their works within minimum time. This reward plan is supportive to provision of positive reinforcement for completing tasks (Manohar et al. 2017, 1016). The contingent reward plan for CUAP is mentioned in the following table.

Table 1: Contingent reward plan

Discretionary rewards are extra payments that are provided by employers based on particular critical situations of business. Employment contracts do not cover the reward and employees cannot expect to have this reward on a regular basis (Fuchs 2015, 100). As CUAP is a new form of business, it can face many risks and challenges. The management may need to pay extra to their employees to retain them and to get their support at the beginning of this business. The following table is mentioning about the discretionary reward plan for CUAP.

Table 1: Discretionary reward plan

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