The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about the most flexible period in terms of employment and remuneration practices ever experienced.
 
Companies reacted swiftly to the impact of the pandemic on the workplace and their ability to pay and retain staff. This has never happened in the past, says Yolanda Sedlmaier, Chartered Reward Specialist and executive committee member of the South African Reward Association (SARA).
 
Companies who were already struggling pre-pandemic, paid lower incentive bonuses to their executive and pay increases across board ranged between 0% and 5%.
 
Moral approach
However, Covid-19 brought about a far greater moral approach to executive pay and incentives. For many companies, bonus payments for past performance (pre-Covid-19) were put on hold, delayed, cut or reallocated from May last year.
 
“Many companies opted to reallocate some of the money into a company fund to assist staff who ran out of leave and were not able to return to work because of the hard lockdown during the initial stages of the pandemic.”
 
Sedlmaier says the same happened in terms of leave. Companies requested employees who had a lot of leave to sacrifice it in order to allocate it to people who ran out of leave during the hard lockdown.
 
Some companies actually benefited financially due to the pandemic, such as telecommunication and pharmaceutical companies.
 
The demand for computers, data and airtime soared as people shifted from the company office to the home office. Several tech companies were in the position to continue paying their staff as usual, including bonuses. 
 
“However, several were circumspective in terms of paying bonuses or giving increases, as they felt a moral obligation not to do so while thousands of people were losing their jobs,” says Sedlmaier.
“We are seeing more of that this year. Companies who were still paying bonuses in March last year were more circumspect this year. Covid-19 has certainly impacted on the morality of paying large bonuses in difficult times,” she notes.
 
Retention measures
Company executives were “expected” to take pay cuts for a period of at least three months last year, and in some cases the period was extended.
 
Other companies offered all staff a three-month unpaid sabbatical or offered them reduced pay for reduced output.
 
Many companies are quite wary about the possible impact of the third wave. Some have started increasing the number of people working on-site again, but with the third wave they experienced an increase in Covid-19 cases and are re-evaluating these arrangements further.
 
Although there has been a slight pick-up in economic activity recently, the third wave is affecting everyone. “There is a possibility for more job losses,” says Sedlmaier.
 
Future trends

• Companies will remain a lot more flexible in future. Many may keep a core staff compliment, but take on more contract workers as the need arises;
• They will allow for more job sharing where two people take salary cuts and share one job;
• Companies will allow people to continue working from home; and
• They will remain flexible on pay according to the hours worked or output delivered.

 
ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: Idéle Prinsloo, 082 573 9219, [email protected], www.atthatpoint.co.za 
 
For more information on SARA please visit:
Website: www.sara.co.za  
Twitter: @SA_reward
LinkedIn: South African Reward Association
Facebook: SARA – South African Reward Association 

​Technology plays a vital role in the evolution of employee reward and incentive programmes, ensuring that the processes are supported and systems seamlessly managed so as to effectively deliver on the employee value proposition (EVP). Technology is the enabler of almost all innovative processes and business models and must not be defined narrowly as an ingredient or component, but rather as a tool which can reveal what is possible and support what is already in play.
 
“Reward strategy must be approached holistically,” explains Peet Kruger, Exco member, South African Reward Association (SARA). “It is essential that technology be integrated into the reward value chain and be seen as an enabler. It cannot drive strategy, but it plays a powerful role in the implementation of strategy.”
 
Understanding the role of technology
“The way in which a business uses technology to support and integrate its delivery of “reward products” to employees can play a critical role in the organisation being seen as an employer of choice,” says Kruger. Organisations can harness technology’s omnipresence to integrate reward solutions into all layers of the business. This will then allow for richer employee engagement and support the delivery of reward and remuneration solutions by aligning them more closely with the people - especially those that grew up with technology -and overarching strategic goals of the organisation.
 
In the value chain, reward is assessed along specific lines to ensure it supports business strategy. It has to take many factors into consideration which include: the skills required, the reward needed to attract these skills, the payment structures, the non-financial rewards which have to be blended into the overall package and the steps which both employee and organisation have to take in order to ensure these are done correctly and within specific parameters.
 
Technology: a valuable solution
Not only does technology help to streamline processes and enhance reward management structures, it enables us to quantify and package the reward value proposition in such a way that it is simple to understand and appealing to the end user.  Employees can see how they contribute to overall organisational success, get a clearer picture of how their rewards are structured and see how much the company is investing in them from a total reward perspective.
 
“There is a growing shift towards the Total Reward Statement which consolidates all the data held within the technology systems and uses this to support and improve reward management throughout the business,” concludes Kruger. “It is a visual representation of the total reward investment in each employee and is a step up from the traditional payslip which mainly focuses on the financial breakdown of the salary package of the employee. This educates, sensitises and create an appreciation for the total reward value proposition enjoyed by employees and contributes to improved engagement and retention of employees”.

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, [email protected], www.atthatpoint.co.za  

For more information on SARA please visit:
Website: www.sara.co.za  
Twitter: @SA_reward
LinkedIn: South African Reward Association
Facebook: SARA – South African Reward Association