HR Reward &
Pay Consulting

As HR professionals, we should consider reward and talent management a key priority in any business. The overall aim is to improve the performance of the business by increasing productivity amongst employees, while maintaining robust and fair pay practices. By doing this, organisations can build a high-performance workplace and add value to the business.

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As an experienced HR Reward Consultant, I can guide your business along the full reward journey from design to implementation. My pay and reward consulting services will come in handy whether you’re looking to undertake a specific reward activity, such as pay benchmarking, job evaluation and building a pay structure. Or whether you want to overhaul your approach to pay and reward, and need a sensible, supported roadmap of activity.

HR reward and recognition plays an important part in the wider talent management strategy across the organisation. I can help you to establish a fair and pragmatic approach to reward strategies that drives performance and builds employee trust. Integrating any approach to Reward with wider HR strategy and operations, and it’s crucial to join the dots across all areas of HR.  

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What areas of Reward can I help with?

Reward Strategy

My HR reward strategy consultation won’t leave you empty handed at any point. We’ll work together collaboratively to create clear objectives, a strategically aligned HR reward strategy and the steps to implementation. It is important to consider how reward and HR interconnect, and how reviewing one aspect can affect another part of your HR landscape. My background in generalist HR together with my CIPD accredited advanced reward expertise ensure you have this covered.

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Your reward strategy should clearly communicate how you will reward employees in relation to objectives, culture and values:

  • Pay stance vs the market (also known as pay benchmarking)
  • The purpose of each pay component
  • Which aspects should or shouldn’t connect to performance
  • Pay progression principles
  • Internal consistency vs external market rates
  • Local vs global frameworks
  • Individual vs team reward

Recent examples of a reward strategy project include:

  • Defining the reward strategy for a mid-size professional services firm, interviewing the senior partners and facilitating a workshop with the Operating Board members to establish core principles which went on to underpin all further reward activity, and defined a clear roadmap of reward priorities
  • Reviewing and updating the reward strategy for a well-known global FMCG, working with the CEO, COO and CPO to ensure the strategy met the needs of the organisation and was consistently applied to all other aspects of the HR and reward framework

Job Evaluation

Job evaluation is a systematic process whereby you compare job roles with each other to determine their relative value to the organisation. Typically, job evaluation forms the architecture around which you can then undertake a robust pay benchmarking exercise, establish any possible issues with pay equity, build a fair and consistent pay structure, better understand your organisation design, and create career pathways.

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As an experienced Reward Consultant I’ll work collaboratively with you to recommend, develop and deliver a job evaluation system that is appropriate to your needs, from a light touch job level hierarchy framework to a more robust and detailed factor-based evaluation framework.  Any such job evaluation system provides a more robust basis for a pay benchmarking exercise, and can also spotlight anomalies in your organisation design (OD), highlight gaps in the structure, and crucially can alert you to potential areas to investigate from an equal pay perspective.

Example of a recent job evaluation project:

  • Created a bespoke job evaluation framework that was robust, yet light-touch, and suitable for a fast growing tech. This framework could map to a range of external pay surveys and easy for the existing HR team to maintain and integrate its use within their wider processes (recruitment, career pathing etc.)

Pay Benchmarking

How do you know if you are paying employees in line with market?  Do you rely on varied information from employees and managers, enthusiastic recruiters and observations of job adverts? A systematic analysis of how your pay compares to market rates, using a reputable pay survey, will give you a robust reference point to defend your pay decisions, ensure pay equity and manage pay review requests.

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I can fully manage the end to end process of pay benchmarking for you, from identifying the most appropriate pay survey or data source, to ensuring your roles are accurately matched into the data, and providing clear analysis of where your workforce sits within this benchmark. I can also use this analysis to develop basic pay structures to meet your needs (with variations for different parts of the business as needed). My combination of reward specialist and generalist HR expertise means I can also ensure this activity seamlessly connects with other aspects of your HR and reward framework, such as pay progression, career pathing, bonus design and performance related pay principles.  

A recent pay benchmarking project:

  • Full Pay Benchmarking for a fast growing tech organisation (c1200 employees in over 10 countries) sourcing a suitable, cost effective data source to enable seamless benchmarking across multiple geographies, upskilling the HR team with the skills to be self-sufficient and undertake further benchmarking after the end of the project

Executive Pay

As an experienced Executive Remuneration consultant, I can undertake a thorough analysis of your executive pay landscape, from an in-depth analysis and benchmarking of each pay component, through to advising on corporate pay governance principles, preparation for Remuneration Committees (Remcom) and LTIP review and design.

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Analysis is provided as a clear and concise Board-ready report, designed to be used in Executive Board meetings, Remuneration Committees and senior leadership presentations.  With my Board level HR experience, I can also work directly with your CEO, CFO or Executive team, and present on your behalf or provide support to you to do this, as needed.

A recent executive pay benchmarking project: 

  • Executive Pay Benchmarking in £170m turnover UK B2B business services organisation for submission to Private Equity Operating Board, liaising directly with CEO, CFO and CPO throughout

Bonus Schemes

When designed well, variable pay schemes (bonus or sales incentives) can provide the most affordable and powerful way to motivate and reward high performance. Do you have a bonus scheme that you think isn’t really delivering this? Whether it’s an issue with design, market alignment, internal equity or communication (or a combination of any of these), I can review, recommend and deliver the changes you need to reward and drive high performance.

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I can support the entire sales incentive or annual bonus scheme review or design process, from analysis to implementation, including:

  • Determine the type of bonus or sales incentive scheme that is right your organisation
  • Define individual, team and company-wide metrics
  • Establish appropriate performance metrics
  • Recommend how to align to your wider performance management processes
  • Align to your overall approach to pay
  • How to communicate the plan to ensure employees understand the bonus scheme

Pay Progression

Making decisions around pay structures, frameworks and progression can seem like a daunting process, with a lot of strategic mechanisms involved. As an experienced HR reward advisor, I can take you through the process step-by-step.

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Organisations with clear pay progression principles and processes provide a fair and transparent framework, by which individual wage increases are defined and presented to employees. Determining pay progression also ensures payroll costs can be more robustly managed, supporting wider strategic goals and budgeting. 

  • Pay progression and promotion principles
  • Connecting, or disconnecting, pay from performance
  • Establishing clearly defined pay structures
  • Defining pay progression salary bandings

Frequently Asked Questions

What is HR Reward and Pay Consulting?

HR Reward and Pay consulting involves analysing and optimising your organisation’s compensation and benefits strategy. It seeks to ensure that companies offer competitive pay, rewards, incentives, and benefits to help attract, retain and motivate their employees effectively.

As an experienced HR Reward Consultant, I can guide your business along the full reward journey from design to implementation. Whether you’re looking to undertake a specific rewards activity or are seeking to overhaul your approach to pay and rewards, my consulting services can help provide you with a clear, strategic and realistic roadmap of supported activity.

Why is HR Reward and Pay Consulting important?

A fair and transparent rewards and pay structure can significantly improve performance and help to build employee trust and morale. Additionally, it is a leading factor in attracting and retaining top-level talent while enhancing employee engagement.

The professional landscape is one which changes at pace – now more so than ever. A growing global and diverse workforce demands, and deserves, transparency and flexibility in their reward and pay structure that not only reflects their skills and talents but also the broader company goals and ethos.

What is pay benchmarking?

Pay benchmarking involves a systematic analysis of how your organisations pay compares to the current market rates. This is done using a reputable pay survey rather than the varied information you can expect from employees, managers, recruiters and job advertisements.

This analysis will give you a clear reference point from which you can develop pay structures, defend pay decisions, ensure pay equity and manage pay review requests.

What is a reward strategy?

A rewards strategy is the way in which your business and people objectives, cultures and values translate into employee rewards. It tackles areas such a local vs global framework, individual vs team rewards and internal consistency vs external market rates.

It’s important that your HR landscape and rewards strategy align, and you are fully aware of the intricacies involved when altering your rewards strategy.

What is a job evaluation?

A job evaluation is a systematic process that allows you to compare job roles to determine their value to your organisation. This can be undertaken on a number of levels, from light touch job level hierarchy to detailed factor-based evaluation.

This framework is then often used to facilitate pay benchmarking exercises to better understand your organisation’s compensation design and create strategic career pathways.

What is executive pay?

 Executive pay refers to the pay landscape of an organisation’s senior leadership and executives. Consultancy in this area includes a thorough analysis and benchmarking of each executive pay component as well as advice on corporate pay governance principles, preparation for Remuneration Committees (Remcom) and LTIP review and design.

What are bonus schemes?

Bonus schemes are a powerful way to help reward and motivate your teams for high performance. Bonus schemes and incentive strategies look different for every organisation and can be tailored to suit your wider business goals, objectives and performance management processes.

What is pay progression?

Pay progression refers to the framework by which an organisation defines and presents individual wage increases to employees. A robust pay progression system can help support wider business strategic goals and budgeting and provide transparent and fair pay progression bandings to your employees.

What is the process for implementing a new reward and pay strategy?

It is vital that a new HR reward and pay strategy is implemented with care and consideration for all parties involved. While each business is different and my approach to each business is bespoke, there are a number of stages typically involved with the rollout of a new reward and pay strategy:

  • The discovery phase in which thorough analysis is undertaken of both internal and external factors that affect the organisation as well as establishing your key goals and objectives.
  • The design phase in which we collaboratively create the structures, strategies and processes that will form your HR reward and pay strategy.
  • The implementation phase where I will work closely with management at all levels to facilitate the changes across your organisation, maximising communication and transparency.
  • The review phase where evaluation of the success of the strategy is undertaken.

What are the benefits of HR reward and pay consulting?

There are a huge number of benefits to seeking out HR reward and pay consulting services. Implementing change on a wide organisational level can be a turbulent time for any business. Having an experienced HR Reward Consultant on hand to assist and help guide you along the full reward journey can transform your strategic outputs and establish a fair and pragmatic approach to pay and rewards across the organisation.

How often should you review your reward and pay strategy?

As the world of work evolves at a rapidly increasing pace, it is important that you regularly review your reward and pay strategy to ensure that your business goals and objectives align themselves with the broader industry standards.

The level of review requirement may differ – some organisations may be in need of a complete strategic overhaul, whereas others may only need a simple realignment of one or more areas within their reward and pay strategy.

Depending on this level, you may choose to review your strategy on a yearly basis in line with, for example, annual pay reviews.

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