Development of compensation plans through Design thinking

The company in this case is a leading Spanish publisher that has managed to establish itself as a benchmark in the field of education and culture. With a solid track record and a wide diversity of publications, it is distinguished by its commitment to quality and excellence in the production of educational materials. Over the years, it has been absorbing more and more small publishers to add them to its portfolio, so a review of the compensation plan is urgently needed since each company in the group has different policies.

PROBLEM

Employees are the engine of any company, since they are the ones in charge of achieving essential objectives and achieving the greatest success; For this reason, it is important that they feel valued and respected for the work they do.

Taking into account the relevance of the issue and the impact it has on the company, the Human Resources department questioned whether the current benefits and compensation really are adapted to the worker today. What works and why does it work? What has to be completely removed?

Through the Design Thinking methodology, the preparation of a list of “compensations and possible benefits” for employees was explored.

50% of employees leave their jobs for better employee benefits.

CHALLENGE

How could we value the compensation and benefits that we currently have in the company?

How could we create a compensation plan according to the needs of our employees but adjusted to the reality of the company?

OBJECTIVE

Our objective is to carry out a qualitative characterization where the company is provided with a clear picture of the profile of compensations and benefits to explore with the employees and that these are attractive and relevant to them.

Design a plan for the employee that is consistent with current needs, that is attractive to future talents and allows both their professional and personal growth. Through the help of the Design Thinking methodology we will be able to know, analyze and co-create

• Promote work sessions with HR personnel to align and share visions of where they are and what are the possible limitations.
• Employee segmentation for subsequent co-creations
• Prepare a list of compensations and benefits, from your current list and from the possible ones to apply.
• Select the policies and benefits to be able to explore with the employees in subsequent co-creations.

METHODOLOGY

Phase I – Understanding the challenge

Stage 0. Kickoff Workshop

To start, a prior analysis of the current situation, needs and expectations of the employee has been carried out by the Human Resources team, in order to understand and put in place the current policies that the company manages.

Stage 1. Motivations and objectives

At this stage we continue to work hand in hand with the collaborative team, which through the help of a workshop session, we have managed to explore and define those benefits that the employee currently enjoys, as well as what motivates them the most to work in the company.  In the following steps we analyze the objective of designing a new compensation and benefits plan through an enriching brainstorming. At Thinkers we question ourselves and ask ourselves: what challenges will we find along the way? how do we deal with them?

Stage 2. Employee profile – Definition of attributes and typology

In order to start creating it is necessary to land the information, for this we have defined with the help of the internal team the profile of the company’s employee. To achieve this, we have generated a list of possible attributes that distinguish the different employees in the industry, which indicate a series of qualitative characteristics that range from ambition at work as well as seniority, going through different particularities that attribute to the different users. With the help of the matrix tool we have managed to generate 5 different profiles that will later help us understand and co-create our objective.

Stage 3. Assessment of initiatives

Once the employee was profiled and the objectives of the challenge were established, we set ourselves the task of investigating trends in employment benefits, especially with the new work and telecommuting models generated as a result of the pandemic that we have recently experienced, discovering interesting and innovative benefits.

With the company’s work team, we analyzed which benefits we cannot eliminate and those valuable to disappear, for which it was proposed to divide the list into 4 sections: we cannot eliminate, valuable to eliminate, explore benefits and explore innovative benefits.

Phase II – Co-creation and solutions

Stage 4. Co-creations – Workshop and Tools

In the following steps, co-creation sessions were held online with the selected profiles; in this space the employees had the opportunity to vote, comment and assess the proposed benefits.

Stage 5. Definition and recommendations

In this final stage, as a result, the needs and desires were clarified, thus allowing: narrowing the list of benefits, eliminating those initiatives that are of least interest and/or need, receiving new proposals from the employee, generating insights through the process and point out the needs not yet covered within the company.

CONCLUSIONS

The human-centric approach is based on the idea that solutions should be designed taking into account the needs, desires and preferences of the people who will use them, the goal is to improve the user experience and make solutions easier to use. , more efficient and more pleasant.

At Thinkers we give ourselves the task of developing research and sessions focused on people, which help us to see beyond the obvious, to listen and empathize with them so that in this way we can resolve concerns.

To achieve our approach satisfactorily, we base our way of working on the Design Thinking methodology, establishing certain tasks that help us to better understand our user, which cover trend analysis, research processes, co-creation sessions and cross-references. insights.

An essential part of our process is actively listening to feedback from our clients as well as from the internal team. We evolve and adjust possible solutions always with a vision focused on the user and their well-being.

At Thinkers we design clearly, experiment innovatively, and continually seek to reinvent the way we find solutions.