Sample Article Review Paper on Employee Compensation
“This Is Why You Need to Talk Money with Your Employees”
According to the article, most employers prefer not talking about the issue of compensation with their employees. Normally, compensation is one of the greatest employee motivation factors. Nevertheless, organizational leaders prefer to go silent on the issue. If organizational leaders do not talk about the issue, employees in most cases prefer talking about it in other places outside the organization. This article asserts that most employees prefer the issue of compensation to be determined by organizations and transparency involved (Lavoie). Organizational leaders need to open up the conversation through a communication plan to their employees about their salaries and other remuneration structures.
According to the article, employers are encouraged to share their employees’ remuneration through avenues like social media with both the organization and the external world to encourage remuneration. When transparency is not befitting enough, the article suggests that some small amounts of openness is vital. The article provides two main steps that need to be followed in opening the compensation communication.
Providing an ongoing feedback about employee compensation is an important system that many organizations have ignored (Lavoie). In compensation matters, employers should open a two-way communication process to allow the employees to weigh situations and make suggestions regarding their pay. Secondly, organizations need to find an effective strategy in managing pay that matches the employees’ needs and not the company culture. This will be significant in motivating employees and attracting new members.
However, in my opinion, I feel this is not the best way of determining employees’ compensation. Firstly, no employee likes receiving low salaries. Opening up conversions among employees and employers on the issue of compensation results in conflict of interest because employees come up with ambiguous figures that they expect companies to honor. In this case, I would prefer the employers to remain the main players in determining the remuneration of their employees based on set labor laws standards that are fair.
Secondly, allowing employees to take part in the compensation conversation encourages the collective responsibility, which is unhealthy for an organization’s performance. In most cases, allowing employers to participate in issues concerning salaries trigger them to make collective suggestion or demands that the organization is forced to honor. In this case, individual efforts and performance becomes fruitless. When organizations solely determine the compensation structure of employees, the specific element involved is employee performance, where employees that are more productive receive higher remuneration. In collective bargaining, employees’ individual work may not be recognized. This demotivates them not to work hard. The company also suffers in two ways: firstly, the production output decreases and lazy and unproductive employees also receive pays that do not fit them.
Moreover, opening the discussion about employees’ compensation in organizations creates unnecessary tensions and misinformed conclusions among employees. Each employee’s remuneration needs to remain undisclosed since each has a different situation or circumstance. For instance, sharing employees’ salaries discloses different salaries that employees performing same duties receive. The employees getting lower salaries might feel uncomfortable and make negative conclusions. However, in real sense, this could be fair because of different factors, such as education and experience level. Opening this communication to the outside world is even worse since different organizations pay different salaries due the existing budgets, income, and philosophies. This can only be effective if the organization is also ready to share all other business information.
In my view, employee compensation should remain a private affair for employers to make decisions based on the law requirement and organization and individual performance.
Works Cited
Lavoie, Andre. EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION. This Is Why You Need to Talk Money with Your Employees. Entrepreneur, Aug 2016 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280786. Accessed 10 September 2016.