What are Total Rewards?
The reward is typically connected with financial rewards such as pay and benefits as opposed to non-financial rewards. When financial and non-financial rewards are used in conjunction with each other this is referred to as total rewards.
The Total Rewards principle takes into account everything an employee values from their employment relationship. This not only includes monetary benefits but also rewards such as achievement, growth and the work environment.
What are Total Rewards Statements?
Put simply, a brief report of an employee’s complete benefits package provided by their employer.
What to include in Total Rewards Statement?
By using the above image you start to build the foundations of your total rewards statement.
For example, starting with transactional rewards, an amount per annum can be assigned to each reward as shown in the table below.
Amount per annum
| Transactional Rewards | |
|---|---|
| Annum Base Pay | £16,000 |
| Annum Base Pay: Commission | £5,000 |
| Employee Benefits: Pension Contributions (4%) Employee Assistance Program Dental Insurance |
£609.12 £20 £100 |
| Total remuneration | £21,729.12 |
It can be seen that these transactional or financial rewards are relatively simple to quantify in order to calculate an individual’s total remuneration.
The relational or non-financial rewards are a little more difficult to assign a value to. However, take achievement and growth, for example, if your organisation has a training budget for each employee it could be included in this section.
Other examples might include a super clean office, free drinks and snacks. Again, by taking your annual budget for these items and dividing it by your total number of employees, you can assign a value per employee.
It is entirely up to each organisation to determine what constitutes non-financial rewards. However, it is important to consider the purpose of reward management which is to ‘add value to people’[ii]. This simple statement prompts us to bear employees and what they value in mind when putting together total rewards statements.
Why use total rewards statements?
Total rewards statements can be used to remind individuals of the total value they receive from their employer, which could help to motivate and retain employees.
Research commissioned by Unum (2013)[iii] found that 64% of employers who have invested in a large range of employee benefits are failing to communicate these to their staff. Additionally, the cost of failing to tell staff about their benefits is estimated to cost UK businesses £2.7bn a year from increased staff turnover and sickness absence.
Using Total Rewards Statements can improve communications of employee benefits, increase take-up rates and may subsequently reduce business costs.
How can Natural HR help with Total Rewards Statements?
Natural HR includes a total rewards module.
Our HR software can produce total rewards statements for every employee, which can be viewed by the individual when they login via self-service. Additionally, the statements are live, so any changes made to an individual’s salary or benefits are immediately reflected in their personalised total rewards statement.
Employee benefits can be visually displayed in a pie chart, table view or both. This allows your employees to gain a view of how much their salary actually amounts to as a percentage of their whole package and the value of benefits that they receive in addition.
There is plenty of room for text boxes that can contain anything you feel is relevant to your total reward strategy. Ideas might include;
- a message to the employee from the organisation’s leaders,
- news on newly launched or upcoming benefits,
- a summary of the benefits employees receive – this could be especially useful to highlight less tangible benefits such as a modern office environment,
- a glossary of benefits could also be included – for example, if you provide an Employee Assistance Programme, let employees know what it covers and provide them with the telephone number of the service.
There is also space for your company logo so that the statement is in keeping with your other employee communications.
