While the terminology might leave something to be desired, HR practitioners say organizations that ignore the concept do so at their peril
Most HR practitioners have a firm grasp of the concept of total rewards, and buy into the benefits of bundling, marketing and branding what the employer offers as part of the work experience, but they're pretty much ignoring the term itself when communicating programs to employees.
According to a recent Canadian HR Reporter survey, 54 per cent of 108 respondents have adopted the total rewards philosophy, but 77 per cent said they don’t use that phrase to communicate it to employees. The survey was e-mailed to subscribers and conducted online in December 2005.
Brent Gordon, manager of HR for Midwest Surveys Inc., a Calgary-based oil and gas surveyor with 425 employees that was recently named one of the top 50 employers in Canada by Report on Business, may have summed up the feeling of many respondents when he said that while the concept of total rewards is sound, the phrase itself is meaningless jargon.
“We don’t use that term,” said Gordon. “We try to stay away from new trendy language. It’s okay to use it in HR, but we’d really need to educate our employees about it. The first time I heard it, I thought, ‘Total rewards? What does that mean?’ And I’m in HR. The average employee just wouldn’t know.”
But organizations would be foolhardy to ignore its benefits, said Gordon. Alberta is feeling the labour shortage more acutely than any other part of the country, and companies need to brand themselves as an employer of choice to stay competitive, he said.
And they can’t lose sight of the fact that compensation itself is just one small piece of the total rewards puzzle. The less tangible aspects of total rewards are just as important and need to be communicated, he said.
“Trust, honesty, input, appreciation and recognition are equally valuable, assuming employees are aware they’re being fairly compensated,” said Gordon. And employers need to get a grasp on what drives their workers and build programs to meet those needs.
“There are definitely generational differences,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure everyone is able to pick up on what’s important to them. Maybe for the Generation Y’er, money is the driver. Maybe for boomers it’s not the money, but the challenge of the work. You need to look at that whole picture.”
Gordon said his HR department usually tries to highlight certain benefits at different times of the year. For example, after the holidays it puts the spotlight on the employment assistance plan.
“After Christmas, people might be short on the financial end and things are tight at home, so that might be kind of a downer,” he said. “So it’s just a reminder that we have that program available for people who have issues financially, relationship issues or whatever.”
Robert Haynes, vice-president of human resources for Regina-based SaskEnergy, a provincial Crown corporation with 1,000 employees that operates natural gas distribution and transmission lines, said his company has used the phrase “total rewards” for about five years now in defining the program and communicating it to workers.
“I’m not sure where I heard this, but someone once said that a reward cannot be valued if it’s not understood,” said Haynes. “And you always have to be linking back to that, reinforcing the point and communicating.”
SaskEnergy sends all employees a benefits summary once a year that outlines all the perks and benefits that come with the job. It’s all part of an effort to get the word out to employees about everything the company has to offer. One thing it struggles with is getting employees to appreciate benefits they might not be using or, at a minimum, understand the breadth of programs available to them.
The importance of that is becoming clearer as the labour market tightens, Haynes said. SaskEnergy has historically had very low turnover — in the one- to two-per-cent range — but things are starting to change.
“It hasn’t reached alarming proportions but it’s unique enough for us to catch our eye,” he said. In a typical five-year period, the company might only lose three or four engineers. But last year alone, five engineers were lured away, mostly to Alberta.
“To lose them to another jurisdiction is a bit of wake-up call for us,” he said. “You can’t rest on your laurels in making sure you get the message out there. We want to make sure, if they are being recruited, that at least they have a good understanding of the package here. You can never keep them all, but the worst thing to have happen would be to have a worker make a decision to accept an offer someplace else and then later discover we offered all the same benefits here.”
From HR's mouths
Total rewards defined
HR practitioners who spoke to Canadian HR Reporter in-depth had a thorough understanding of the definition of total rewards. Here’s a sampling of what they said.
“It’s a holistic package that relates to the employee’s relationship with the company,” said Gerry Meyer, director of human resources at Minto Developments Inc., an Ottawa-based residential property management group with 1,200 employees. “It encompasses monetary earnings, compensation, any variable compensation, training and development, career progression and the overall benefits package.”
Daria Taylor, a finance and HR specialist with Alberta Milk, a dairy promotion organization based in Edmonton with 35 employees, defined it this way:
“To me, it’s just all the ‘others’ you give the staff, including pay. Anything you offer staff as a perk or as part of being employed, whether it be your vacation policy or whether it be benefit packages, incentives, compressed work weeks. Anything we do for our staff would be total rewards.”
Ryan Embrett, HR manager at the Holiday Inn Harbourview in Dartmouth, N.S., which has 120 employees, said:
“For total rewards, I would think of the mosaic of the employment relationship. Their wage, the incentive program, everything that the employee would come into contact with as part of their employment.”
According to a recent Canadian HR Reporter survey, 54 per cent of 108 respondents have adopted the total rewards philosophy, but 77 per cent said they don’t use that phrase to communicate it to employees. The survey was e-mailed to subscribers and conducted online in December 2005.
Brent Gordon, manager of HR for Midwest Surveys Inc., a Calgary-based oil and gas surveyor with 425 employees that was recently named one of the top 50 employers in Canada by Report on Business, may have summed up the feeling of many respondents when he said that while the concept of total rewards is sound, the phrase itself is meaningless jargon.
“We don’t use that term,” said Gordon. “We try to stay away from new trendy language. It’s okay to use it in HR, but we’d really need to educate our employees about it. The first time I heard it, I thought, ‘Total rewards? What does that mean?’ And I’m in HR. The average employee just wouldn’t know.”
But organizations would be foolhardy to ignore its benefits, said Gordon. Alberta is feeling the labour shortage more acutely than any other part of the country, and companies need to brand themselves as an employer of choice to stay competitive, he said.
And they can’t lose sight of the fact that compensation itself is just one small piece of the total rewards puzzle. The less tangible aspects of total rewards are just as important and need to be communicated, he said.
“Trust, honesty, input, appreciation and recognition are equally valuable, assuming employees are aware they’re being fairly compensated,” said Gordon. And employers need to get a grasp on what drives their workers and build programs to meet those needs.
“There are definitely generational differences,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure everyone is able to pick up on what’s important to them. Maybe for the Generation Y’er, money is the driver. Maybe for boomers it’s not the money, but the challenge of the work. You need to look at that whole picture.”
Gordon said his HR department usually tries to highlight certain benefits at different times of the year. For example, after the holidays it puts the spotlight on the employment assistance plan.
“After Christmas, people might be short on the financial end and things are tight at home, so that might be kind of a downer,” he said. “So it’s just a reminder that we have that program available for people who have issues financially, relationship issues or whatever.”
Robert Haynes, vice-president of human resources for Regina-based SaskEnergy, a provincial Crown corporation with 1,000 employees that operates natural gas distribution and transmission lines, said his company has used the phrase “total rewards” for about five years now in defining the program and communicating it to workers.
“I’m not sure where I heard this, but someone once said that a reward cannot be valued if it’s not understood,” said Haynes. “And you always have to be linking back to that, reinforcing the point and communicating.”
SaskEnergy sends all employees a benefits summary once a year that outlines all the perks and benefits that come with the job. It’s all part of an effort to get the word out to employees about everything the company has to offer. One thing it struggles with is getting employees to appreciate benefits they might not be using or, at a minimum, understand the breadth of programs available to them.
The importance of that is becoming clearer as the labour market tightens, Haynes said. SaskEnergy has historically had very low turnover — in the one- to two-per-cent range — but things are starting to change.
“It hasn’t reached alarming proportions but it’s unique enough for us to catch our eye,” he said. In a typical five-year period, the company might only lose three or four engineers. But last year alone, five engineers were lured away, mostly to Alberta.
“To lose them to another jurisdiction is a bit of wake-up call for us,” he said. “You can’t rest on your laurels in making sure you get the message out there. We want to make sure, if they are being recruited, that at least they have a good understanding of the package here. You can never keep them all, but the worst thing to have happen would be to have a worker make a decision to accept an offer someplace else and then later discover we offered all the same benefits here.”
From HR's mouths
Total rewards defined
HR practitioners who spoke to Canadian HR Reporter in-depth had a thorough understanding of the definition of total rewards. Here’s a sampling of what they said.
“It’s a holistic package that relates to the employee’s relationship with the company,” said Gerry Meyer, director of human resources at Minto Developments Inc., an Ottawa-based residential property management group with 1,200 employees. “It encompasses monetary earnings, compensation, any variable compensation, training and development, career progression and the overall benefits package.”
Daria Taylor, a finance and HR specialist with Alberta Milk, a dairy promotion organization based in Edmonton with 35 employees, defined it this way:
“To me, it’s just all the ‘others’ you give the staff, including pay. Anything you offer staff as a perk or as part of being employed, whether it be your vacation policy or whether it be benefit packages, incentives, compressed work weeks. Anything we do for our staff would be total rewards.”
Ryan Embrett, HR manager at the Holiday Inn Harbourview in Dartmouth, N.S., which has 120 employees, said:
“For total rewards, I would think of the mosaic of the employment relationship. Their wage, the incentive program, everything that the employee would come into contact with as part of their employment.”
