Rewards management
The context:
Our client is from the not-for-profit sector, a global organization providing cutting-edge medicine and advocacy to more than 200,000 patients in 28 countries. In India, they have around 20 employees and operate through a Centre of Excellence in Delhi and two other clinics in Mumbai and Kolkata, offering testing, psycho‐social support and ART services, including pediatric treatment.
The organization felt a need to be market competitive in terms of compensation and to avoid any discrepancy in the compensation structure across countries. Hence the organization approached Cerebrus to conduct compensation benchmarking studies for 4 countries viz. India, Cambodia, Nepal and Vietnam.
Our approach:
As a part of this assignment, we conducted compensation benchmarking studies for the staff in 4 countries viz. India, Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia covering about 17 positions in India, 11 in Nepal, 4 in Vietnam and 20 in Cambodia. Additionally we also benchmarked the typical elements of compensation and benefits like Insurance, Loan and Leave etc across countries.
Cerebrus met with the Country Heads / HR Managers across countries to understand the roles of benchmark jobs, various levels, compensation structure and related policies in the organisation. We also reviewed the job descriptions for the positions to be benchmarked.
We observed that the client’s compensation structure was different in all the 4 countries and the comparison was to be on the common platform across countries. Hence we created a common definition of compensation parameters across all the 4 countries. The salaries were adjusted to a ‘work-week’ in line with the client practice for the respective country. The salaries were also grossed-up in the case where the staff is fully exempted from tax in some comparator organizations.
Since most of the organizations in the not-for-profit sector have salary scales for their employees, data was collected at minimum, maximum of scales and actual median salaries from the market. Data was compared based on Position / Grade equivalence – based on standard job evaluation parameters such as know-how, job scope, accountability and organization related factors. The salary comparative analysis was done at various points to provide the client with their competitive standing in the market.
The outcome:
Based on the client’s competitive standing / positioning analysis, it helped the senior management team get an insight that market hiring may not typically be at the minimum of the scale and actual salaries of market are higher than the client’s minimum scales.
Since our client would hire / lose this talent (Medical Staff) to Government sector also, it was also essential to align compensation with the Government salaries, considering that 6th CPC had a significant revision in salaries and allowances in 2006 in India. As a part of the output, we also indicated government salaries for medical staff.
As a result of this exercise, the management implemented some of the compensation & benefits related changes in line with market practices, which further helped in enhancing the hiring / retention for critical roles in the organization.