Having to juggle multiple spreadsheets is one of the main pain points of pay review but the introduction of HR technology to support the process and not only makes life a little easier, but also helps you work more efficiently and effectively at pay review time and throughout the year.

 In addition to the painful spreadsheets, do any of the following challenges sound familiar?
•    The application and management of different pay arrangements for various employee populations
•    Keeping track of what employees are getting, alongside trying to manage overall business costs
•    Lack of visibility across different departments of budget spend, and the need to chase-up managers for their input, which may be very time-consuming
•    Insufficient visibility of where managers are with giving their input and trying to plan your pay review activities around this.
•    Having to create different data cuts and spreadsheets to send to managers and worrying about whether the right data has been sent to the right manager
•    Worrying about spreadsheets generally, whether formulas are working correctly, changes have been captured accurately, version control, being able to spot errors
•    Carrying out additional analysis on gender pay and equal pay – all within a relatively short time-period.

If the answer to the above is YES, we understand having to be reactive during the pay review process can be extremely stressful. 

Is there a way to do it better, more easily and effectively? 
Through the conversations we’re currently having with our clients, we understand the important points when it comes to managing pay review include being able to look at the total picture quickly and easily, knowing where you are with your different pay review activities and transferring information seamlessly. Utilising HR for these processes can also be backed up by having reliable information, good audit trails and saving time – and being able to use the time you have more efficiently. Increasingly, companies want to manage all these activities across a single platform, which is where HR tech can really help you.

Why should it be of interest to me? 
You might be thinking that with clever use of Excel spreadsheets, alongside having a tried and tested pay review process in place, you are already fine as you are. And this may indeed be the case. For some organisations, particularly smaller ones, additional spend on new software for what is regarded as a ‘once-a-year’ event may be hard to justify. 
However, it’s not only about trying to keep pay review pain-free. If managed well, the process can help support other Reward activities throughout the year.

In summary, using HR tech to support pay review can put the HR function on the front foot and help you take a far more strategic approach to managing and maximising the annual pay budget.

As examples, you can leverage HR tech to:
•    Model different scenarios – including pre and post-pay review
•    You can create customised dashboards
•    You can look at budget distribution – including proposed and actual spend by different departments
•    You can overlay performance matrices
•    Review your costs – e.g. bringing employees to the minimum or median of a range etc.
•    Interrogate the data to report the impact of pay review on different employee groups, including by gender and ethnicity.

We are now seeing a growing trend in the application of HR tech to support not only the annual pay review process but also related processes including the regular performance-management cycle and activities including objective-setting and performance evaluations.

It’s important to stress that technology is not perfect and does not replace good conversations and clear communication around the annual pay review process. It can, however, save you time, give you better and more convenient visibility of the information you need, and provide insights to support more strategic thinking around Reward.

If you are interested in finding out more about how HR tech can support and enhance your pay review, pay benchmarking and job evaluation activities, visit our Innecto Digital page. If you would like a demo of any of our products, we are now booking these in, so please email enquiries@innecto.com to arrange your slot.

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