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Researching different pay systems - can you help?

Posted by Jillian Tansey on November 19, 2013 at 5:16pm in HR Technology

Hi everyone,

I work for a social housing landlord who currently use a local government pay system (the company has local government roots from back in the day). We are merging in April 2014 with another social housing landlord who is not historically from local government so they use a more commercially orientated pay system.

I've been tasked with researching how companies have moved from local government to commercial systems.

Unfortunately I don't have a huge amount of information as I am not involved with our current pay system & I'm not involved in the merger talks, so I'm going in blind.

Any advice or suggestions on where to start looking would be helpful or if you have moved from one system to another yourself could you explain what you did & how you did it?

Also what pay systems do you currently use? It might be that we implement a whole new pay system for the new company after April, so knowing what's out there would be great & I can outline our options!

Thanks

Jill

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Replies

Steve Davis November 21, 2013 at 9:22pm

Hi Jill,

Reading your reply to Mike, it sounds as if you are heading down the same route as my organisation. We intend to move away from an incremental pay system and into a banded system.

The essential element, as I'm sure you will be well aware of, is ensuring that your staff fully understand what is happening, and can be assured that they will not be losing money as a result. I included two members of general staff on the benchmarking process, so that we could demonstrate it was conducted fairly and professionally. It goes a long way towards retaining staff confidence and trust at a time when they may well feel uneasy about the changes that are coming up.

Good luck, hope all goes smoothly,

Steve
- Jillian Tansey > Steve Davis November 22, 2013 at 9:37am
  
  Hi Steve, thanks for responding.
  
  Could you possibly give me a bit more information about the process you went down?
  
  At what point did you benchmark? We are right at the beginning of this so the basics of how you went about moving to the banded system would be really helpful.
  
  Thanks
  
  Jill
  - Steve Davis > Jillian Tansey November 24, 2013 at 3:39pm
    
    Hi Jill,
    
    To be honest, the benchmarking process was what led us to the need for a change. We have benchmarking as part of our pay policy - it is subject to review every 3 years (I think it's 3 anyway). When we started it, and looked around for comparisons, we noticed that most of the similar organisations had dropped incremental payments systems and opted for either flat rate or banded systems.
    
    Further investigation enabled us to see that the banded system made it easier for budget forecasting, yet with the flexibility to be able to recognise that there are subtly different levels of responsibility/ technical needs etc within a grade that needed to be evaluated.
    
    We have yet to make the move, so are probably in about the same position as you. Currently in the process of setting out the budget for next year. That may take quite some time yet, and may even lead to the process being delayed until roll out in 2015. No staff are losing out in any way, so there is no hurry in our case - and I'd rather take the time and get it right first time, than have to revisit later.
    
    Regards
    
    Steve
    - Jillian Tansey > Steve Davis November 25, 2013 at 10:23am
      
      Hi Steve
      
      Thanks for that. It's given me a a few things to think about & look into in more detail.
      
      Totally agree about wanting to get it right first time, all too often things are rushed into place & then you have to go back & fix things!
      
      Jill
Mike Collins November 21, 2013 at 1:17pm

Hi Jill,

Thanks for posting and I'm sure there will be some help out there from someone who may have done the exact same thing or may even be looking at this at the same time.

To start you off take a look at this article from Personnel Today it might be useful to start help shape some thinking around it.

http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/free-guide-hr-payroll-software-adv...

Mike
- Jillian Tansey > Mike Collins November 21, 2013 at 3:30pm
  
  Hi Mike
  
  Thanks for this.
  
  I've had a bit more guidance from my manager & we're looking at moving from a system that is annual pay rises with spines to a banded system that provides a platform for Pay for Performance.
  
  We've just moved out payroll inhouse in July so i dont think we're looking for a software package but more of how you move from one type of pay system to another.
  
  Jill
  - Mike Collins > Jillian Tansey November 21, 2013 at 4:33pm
    
    Ah right with you - makes sense. Will include this in tomorrow's weekly update :-)