1. What does a typical working day look like?
Every day is busy and different. I work with many clients on a wide variety of projects, so no 2 days are the same. A typical day can involve meeting new clients to understand how we can support them to achieve their goals, analysing data and developing data models to highlight potential options and solutions to pay and reward challenges, and presenting our findings back to stakeholders, hearing their feedback and responding appropriately. It is a case of spinning many plates all at the same time, but I enjoy being busy and I enjoy the challenge (most of the time!).
2. What initially drew you to a career within Reward, and why did you choose this field?
To be honest, I was looking for an analyst role in any field as I enjoy working with numbers. Having just had my second child, I was looking for part-time work with flexibility around hours so that I could have both a fulfilling job and important family time. This is what drew me to Innecto initially as it gave me the best of both worlds. 9 years on and my children are both in secondary school and I progressed to a Reward Consultant with the knowledge and skills that I have learned over the years, and I love the fact that I am still learning today.
3. What excites you about potential advancements or changes in Reward?
Reward isn’t just about pay anymore, there’s so much more to it. Pay is very important, but when you look at the total reward package, if done properly, there’s a lot of value in it for people of all ages and backgrounds. It’s sad when I hear employees say that don’t either know what their organisation offers in terms of employee benefits, or that they say that the benefits are not relevant for them, because this is a relatively simple thing to fix when organisations understand their employee demographic. Things like flexible working, parental leave, carers leave, health cash plans, holiday purchase as examples make everyday living easier.
4. What sort of company is Innecto to work for?
Firstly, I’d say Innecto puts people at the forefront, whether this be employees or clients. We are a helpful, supportive and professional team, who work with honesty and integrity, and we all have the same thing in common, which is to help and support our clients. Although we all work remotely, we are in regular contact with each other and are always there to help and support each other.
5. Which is your favourite/most used employee benefit?
There’s a lot to choose from, but I use the discounts regularly via our Hapi app. We have cash plans which come in handy for dental costs and eye care especially in the current climate, and access to an online doctor which I have needed to use when I have been unable to get a GP appointment. I really value our flexible working policy, PMI cover and pension plan too.
6. What's your favourite moment at Innecto so far?
Being recognised by my colleagues who nominated for a Super Nova award. It meant a lot to me as it was peer-to-peer recognition for just being me.
7. What advice do you have for aspiring Reward professionals?
If you enjoy a good mix of data analysis and thoroughly getting underneath the numbers coupled with the desire to communicate with and support organisations in their pay and reward challenges, this would be a good role for you. Every organisation is different and has its own struggles, so having the ability to be flexible and adjust your approach to match is very important. Starting as a Reward Analyst would give you many opportunities to learn and be involved in many reward areas, and as you progress, you will get exposed to more complex projects until you can project manage your own. If you enjoy a variety of work, then this would suit.
8. What are your areas of specialism?
One of my key areas is working with clients to calculate their gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps and understand why these gaps exist. I have supported many organisations with their pay benchmarking to understand whether their reward package is in line with the market, and then designing and developing pay frameworks and structures to help employees to progress up through the pay bands. Hot topics for me are executive pay and bonus modelling.
9. What clients have you worked with / any specific sectors?
Wow, in 9 years that’s a lot! I have long-standing relationships with membership organisations such as The Caravan & Motorhome Club, The British Medical Association and The Nursing & Midwifery Council having worked with them for several years now. Not-for-profit and charitable organisations include The Francis Crick Institute and The British Library; I have seen into the HR world at Airtanker and Bristol Airport; Shaftesbury and Grosvenor Estates opened the door for Real Estate experience; and Compare the Market and RPMI enabled me to work with Financial Services organisations. Then for the sporting fans, I’ve even had the opportunity to work with Arsenal and the RFU!
10. What are your passion areas of reward?
What are you particularly interested in? There are so many opportunities that it’s tough to choose. I enjoy Reward Strategy and Discovery because for me it’s the start of the journey for a client, understanding what is currently in place and what direction they want to go in, and it’s our job to help and support them to achieve this. This often sets the direction of the project, and sometimes a client comes to use it thinking they need one thing to fix their problem, it the questioning and discovery can sometimes reveal that there’s a different solution. From this point, we build and test to check, re-evaluate, if necessary, until we create the best options.
