HR & Compensation Consulting Services

When companies’ strategies change, so too should their structure. Too often companies shoehorn new jobs into an existing structure. To complicate things further, titles have been turned into currency. Instead of defining accountability and authority, they have become a bargaining chip. Without a good structure and clarity of accountability and authority, employees find confusion among functions and their roles, decision-making bottlenecks form, and execution slows down. MorganHR uses a keen eye to ensure the structure and title strategy are aligned more towards effectiveness than efficiency. We facilitate the entire process beginning with a sound business orientation. We carry out the requisite job analysis via data collection, questionnaires, and/or interviews. We develop and facilitate the approval of a core title strategy and hierarchical minimum requirements with HR and key stakeholders. We continue with the third phase of documenting all job content with the new core and/or business-facing titles (as appropriate) on the approved job description template. We facilitate the final phase of manager review and approval of the job description and ultimate electronic storage for ease of future reference.

Duration: 6 – 8 Weeks

Together, we will determine the best timing and identify the appropriate and right-sized internal and external resources necessary to conduct the audit.

Deliverables:

• Current and desired state interviews with key stakeholders
• Documented current state evaluation
• Documented title guideline
• Minimum requirements guideline
• Impact analysis
• A documented change management plan
• Deployment communications & HR training
• Documented, approved, and internally-filed job descriptions

Salary compression can be a serious problem that eventually causes an organization to lose some of its most talented employees. When salary compression and the policies that enable it are sustained over several years, it can be demoralizing and lead to widespread dissatisfaction. In situations where salary compression causes salary inversion—where newer staff makes more than experienced staff—it could create a pay equity problem if the experienced staff are a protected class.

MorganHR works with companies to analyze the current pay practices and policies, identify the issue areas, and implement the actions necessary to fix the issues now and to keep it from recurring. Implementing and maintaining a structure that is transparent, aligned, and market-based is a great first start!

Duration: 6 – 8 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Current and desired state interviews with key stakeholders
• Documented current state evaluation
• A company-sized job evaluation tool
• Company-sized grade or pay level structure
• Determination of the company’s benchmark jobs
• Job-to-Market base pay evaluation*
• Grade or pay level assignments for the company’s benchmark jobs
• Supervisor-to-direct report salary analysis
• Impact analysis for stakeholders
  • At-risk employees
  • Pay equity and tendency risk
• Import file for HRIS data storage
• Deployment communications & HR training

*Survey data purchase may be additional and required

Companies need talented and skilled individuals to build a successful business. If the salary structure gets out of sync with the overall labor market, a company may find itself paying employees too much and needlessly increasing operating costs, or paying employees too little and having difficulty attracting and retaining talent. A salary structure provides a framework for fair and consistent pay policies; it helps monitor and control the implemented pay practices and demonstrate possible pay opportunities to the employees. Implementing good salary structures is critical for any company. MorganHR sets up pay levels to be competitive to foster employee engagement. We help our clients set up minimum and maximum levels within those pay ranges to account for variations in experience and skill levels. We work to determine where clients align within their industry as well as competing industries that may also offer job opportunities for their employees. We help our global clients set up these structures in any geographical area.

Duration: 6 – 8 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Analyze business needs, culture, KPI’s, external factors, and, if established, compensation philosophy
• Create job structure(s)
  • Spread and progression
• Evaluate jobs and set salary ranges (market pricing)
• Create salary grades or pay levels
  • Regression
  • Lead, Match, Lag
• Deliver guidelines on how to administer, evaluate, and keep aligned

Successful business leaders anticipate their company’s vulnerabilities and align behaviors and actions to fix them in advance of any regulatory or private employee challenge. Preventive pay audits help ensure fairness in pay rates among similarly situated employees, which serves to maintain good workplace morale potentially avoiding employee lawsuits. Such audits enable an organization to assess its susceptibility to a claim of systemic, pattern, or practice discrimination, which may be brought by the EEOC, OFCCP, or private litigant(s) in either an individual or class action context. MorganHR reviews relevant employee demographic and market data to determine risk areas. We identify the competitiveness of jobs and what the external market is demanding. We work with clients to confirm if a job is a growing or dying profession. We review client talent acquisition, job design, and progression-related decisions to ensure that they are not creating issues. At the same time, we pay attention to market changes to help clients with optimizing employee engagement.

Duration: 6 – 8 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Interview stakeholders and identify key decision factors
• Extract and summarize employee demographic data
• Collect job descriptions and pay data for identified at-risk jobs
• Identify market and obtain competitive data
• Deliver executive report of findings and recommendations

Almost all companies, regardless of size, use as much market data as possible to inform all areas of operations. They do not depend upon hearsay, Internet postings, or anecdotal information to manage their businesses. Analyzing compensation survey results allows business leaders to determine how much to pay compared to the market. If a company pays too low, they run the risk of losing their top talent. If they pay too high they may be hindering the competitiveness of their company and reducing its sustainability. MorganHR brings to the assignment the breadth and depth of survey-related experience acquired from participating in numerous surveys for an array of industries for our broad group of clients. Therefore, our consultants can quickly respond to the client’s survey submission needs.

The survey submissions typically start in Winter/Spring and can have specific, aggressive deadlines to meet. If managing the submissions for your compensation surveys is becoming a resource drain, we can help you.

Duration: 2 – 3 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Manage the internal data gathering to complete the Domestic Industry Survey-Specific questionnaire
• Manage the internal data gathering for detailed, global compensation surveys including employee-based data in specific jobs and for the requisite unique and/or specific reasons
• Completed survey-specific submission template
• Facilitate questions and issue a response on behalf of the client with a survey vendor
• Deliver import file for internal HRIS data storage

• Additional Option: Research and recommendation for the purchase of market data
  • Peer group participation assessment
  • Scorecard of best-aligned market data to company philosophy
  • Inclusivity of needed key job information and scope differentiation

• Additional Option: Validate relevancy of data returned by submitted job for client use and create market impact/observation summary
  • Impact analysis of job data submitted versus previous year’s data
  • Significant impact evaluation of returned data points versus current data
  • Summary of market impact/observations by job family for stakeholder presentation

The board of directors’ key role is to create incentives that make it in the CEO’s best interest to do what’s in the shareholders’ best interests. With compensation issues and scenarios being dissected under the public microscope, board members, executives, and advisors are being scrutinized like never before. This increasingly complex environment heightens the need for credible, strategic-thinking, governance-minded compensation experts and, equally critical, the need for a solid process for selecting those experts. MorganHR either directly provides these evaluations for your Compensation Committee, or we can assist management with this information in review and formulation of compensation proposals for recommendation to the Committee.
Advisor independence rules and requirements are satisfied with MorganHR, Inc.’s help to gather, evaluate, and report on our market-based findings for the CEO and other key executive pay levels.

Duration: 2 – 4 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Committee/Executive Interviews and/or Meeting Attendance
• Proxy research and market data gathering
• Total Cash regression
• Final Executive Report and Presentation of findings
  • Collection, organization, and robust analysis of compensation data tailored to provide useful comparisons to the Company’s actual executive officers’ positions and roles
  • Documented view on the appropriate compensation for executive officers
  • Documented observations/views of how the Company’s programs compare to those at other peer companies
  • Documented statement of overall trends in public company executive compensation
  • Statement of changes of the Company’s peer group in terms of the design of compensation arrangements, forms of compensation awards, and allocations of overall compensation into different types of compensation awards (e.g., the allocation of performance-based compensation vs. compensation that is not at risk)

*Disclosure obligations under Item 407(e)(3)(iii) of Regulation S-K supplied, as necessary

Companies today face a dizzying array of compensation challenges. Rebuilding a workforce. Positioning for growth. Dealing with regulations on incentive pay and executive compensation. Paying for performance. And more. A comprehensive compensation strategy can be the foundation for creating an environment that recognizes and rewards employee performance and helps to establish a strong culture of employee engagement. Compensation priorities need to be set in light of executive governance and managerial influence, organizational culture, company KPI’s, functional KPI’s, fiscal forecasts, and current budgets. Your written and/or inherent philosophy is important to employee engagement. Do you want to pay at the top of your market or somewhere in the middle? Are you okay being considered one of the lowest-paying organizations? MorganHR helps organizations take a practical yet comprehensive review of their compensation program to establish short, mid, and long-term goals.

Duration: 2 – 4 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Interviews with key stakeholders and executive leadership
• A summary of stakeholder interviews of their top compensation issues
• Statement of current industry-specific and competitive trends and pay practices
• A preliminary audit of the following:
  • Compliance with all federal and state laws
  • Performance management system
  • Salary structure and range placement
  • Exempt/non-exempt evaluation
  • New positions
  • Adherence to Base, Incentive, and Wealth creation goals
  • Pay Equity
• Recommendation for HR resources and budget

HR leaders realize that conducting an HR audit helps to ensure the company is in compliance and conformance with the law. It will help HR professionals standardize processes, identify risk areas, and tie HR goals to strategic business goals. MorganHR takes a diligent and deliberate approach to conducting the audit. At the conclusion of the audit, we provide our clients with a full report, including recommendations for improving their HR initiatives within the organization. This audit provides the information needed to create their HR strategic plan. The creation or facilitation of the HR plan by us can be included if requested in the original scope of work.

Deliverables:

• Determine Audit Scope and Objectives
• Assess Current Practices
  • Documentation
  • Personnel Files/Data
  • Policies
  • FLSA Classification
  • Time Records
  • Audit Questionnaire
• Analyze results and Review Areas that need Change/Development
• Create Action Plans
• Develop Internal Process for Continuous Feedback and Development
• Deliver Audit Report and Presentation to Key Stakeholders

Business owners can have a particular difficulty keeping up with labor law regulations related to benefits and overtime pay. The continuous legislation updates and state-by-state differences create confusion and risk for non-compliance. For instance, some challenges include states with higher minimum wage than federal law and municipalities with a “living wage” even higher than the federal and state minimum wage. While the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay non-exempt employees overtime if they work over 40 hours in a workweek, some states require daily overtime. Even with the government-provided tests, there is a fine line in the determination of which employees are exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws. MorganHR conducts a wage and hour audit to identify issues and help clients correct any violations to ensure they do not occur in the future.

Duration: 2 – 4 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Review the classification of currently exempt employees and jobs
• Conduct critical evaluation on employees and jobs currently classified as exempt
  • Salary Basis
  • Duties
• Validate processes in place to support jobs and employees classified as non-exempt
  • Recordkeeping: time records, payroll records; collective bargaining agreements, contracts; training wage; posters, notices, and communication
  • Minimum Wage: state of local law; training wage requirements; deductions; reporting, call-in, on-call; training
  • Vacation, holidays, leaves, sick: Accurate descriptions; qualification/eligibility; accumulation/vesting; scheduling/work on holiday; conditions; forfeiture of pay; carry over; mandated leave; the level of pay
  • Overtime: record of hours worked; state or local law; time not worked; scheduling, notice; required overtime; incentive pay; compensatory time off
  • Leased temporary employees and Independent contractors – overtime; withholding requirements
• Conduct analysis on other company practices that may impact employee classification
  • Benefits and accruals
  • Payroll processing
  • Complaint and violation reporting process
  • Handbook and policies
  • Training
• Final report on status, remedies taken/needed, and other next steps

Many managers assume the most important motivator at work is pay. Yet, studies point to a different factor as the major influence over worker motivation—job design. How a job is designed has a major impact on employee motivation, job satisfaction, commitment to an organization, absenteeism, and turnover. Periodic job audits are recommended for clients experiencing rapid growth and expansion. MorganHR (re)assesses job duties, identifies the jobs’ simplest components to set minimum qualifications and training needs. We may identify needs that require further evaluation of compensation levels. Our assessment helps to ensure that our clients’ employees are suitably matched to jobs that best utilize their capabilities, strengths, and interests. The result of our job audit also ensures compliance with federal and state laws pertaining to employee and job classifications.

Duration: 2 – 4 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Review current job description templates for completeness in terms of position title, function/department, essential job responsibilities, and minimum qualifications
• Gather and organize current job descriptions
• Update job descriptions with prioritized current essential and marginal job responsibilities
  • Complete interviews with functional/department managers
  • In some cases, employee observations, surveys, and/or interviews may be necessary to obtain more accurate information about the duties the employee performs
• Coordinate manager recommendations and final approval of appropriate minimum qualifications for any updated job responsibilities
• Conduct impact analysis of current employee qualifications to meet the new minimum education or credential requirements
• Conduct an evaluation of new job responsibilities and commensurate salary range to respective federal regulations for exempt classification (Fair Labor Standards Act)
• Facilitate manager authorization and incumbent review of the amended job duties and updated job descriptions
• Deliver file of job-related changes for HR records, employee census data, organizational charts, and other employment information impacted by job description updates
• Final report on status, remedies taken/needed, and other next steps

MorganHR specializes in aligning employee behavior with results, offering tailored training solutions to meet your needs. We help you identify training priorities and learner activities, partnering with leading development agencies to create comprehensive programs that attract and retain top talent. Choose from a variety of customizable Supervisor and Employee training programs available on-site or via virtual facilitation.

• Self-Awareness
  • Values
  • Finding Your Strengths
  • Myers Briggs
• Team Effectiveness
  • Power of Trust
  • Dare to Discuss
• Projects with Purpose
  • Successful Project Debriefs
• Leading Others
• Situational Leadership
• Facilitating Healthy Meetings
• Non-Harassment Workplace
• Preventing Sexual Harassment
• New Supervisor Leadership Series

Companies want to ensure employee and company performance metrics are aligned to the root causes of financial performance, tie to customer satisfaction, and are easy to monitor and control. MorganHR’s process helps leaders develop performance scorecards and dashboards tied to their strategic plans. We are dedicated to helping organizations integrate best-practice performance management processes that fit their culture and workforce.

Duration: 2 – 4 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Evaluate current Performance Management process, as well as competencies identified in the available Job Descriptions
• Develop Performance Management Framework including: Rating Scale, etc.
• Define stages of the performance appraisal process with identified ownership and timelines
• Facilitate discussions about the methods to link the performance to the company, functional group, and individual
• Define process to form, communicate, and monitor performance indicators through organization
• Define individual role-specific performance indicators, measurement requirements and Guidelines
• Align Cultures and behaviors to the organizational core values
• Align Performance measurement to vision and strategy
• Provide a linkage between the newly developed performance system with the current incentive bonus payment practice
• Review job descriptions and provide Behavioral Competency Dictionary
• Provide training to all managers on the new system

Business leaders want to simply get their work done.  This process will develop a common understanding of the project to date: its purpose, objectives, goals, interdependencies, and history (decisions already made, work completed to date).

Its purpose is to create a framework for effective project management.  In partnership with your team, MorganHR works to attract capture your needs, document activities to support the effort, and deliver a summary to put ideas into play.

Duration: 1/2 day up to 1 full day

Our deliverables include:

• Host a deep dive brainstorming conversation with the project team to capture all past efforts and current needs.
• Create a mindmap or summary reflecting a set of prioritized functional and non-functional project requirements
• Identify associated business rules, assumptions, constraints, and risks
• A list of required actions and tasks
• Capture and summarize supporting materials for the team’s ongoing reference
• Identify key internal and external stakeholders
• Summarize and document key decisions and topics discussed

Many companies rely on their hiring managers to devise their own interviews and simple tests for evaluating the job candidates to fill open positions. As a Quality Manager understands that you cannot guarantee quality without a standard procedure in place to ensure consistency of the process. Inconsistent processes lead to inconsistent results. A standardized hiring process has an added benefit of being legal defensible. An inconsistent process of applying criteria can be a breeding ground for discriminatory hiring practices and can create the perception of favoritism or disparate treatment. MorganHR helps clients define the goals or standards of our their hiring process, establishes effective decision making criteria, ensures that recruiters and hiring managers use the same reference points when making decisions, and sets a course for continuous improvement.

Duration: 2 – 3 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Define the scope of the process, the criteria to measure success by, and agree upon the deliverables
• Review the current recruitment process and identify and collect data from sourcing, interviewing, and making final decisions
• Identify improvements to the process and necessary changes to sustain the improvements
• Verify that the improvements will achieve the goals and optimize recruitment, then prioritize and plan the improvements
• Execute the plan and implement the changes; gather feedback and review

Great organizations need great people to reach their strategic goals. When employees continue to report being short-handed and mention that certain tasks are not being done, it can point to the need for new positions. A little workforce planning can go a long way towards keeping one’s sanity. MorganHR helps clients put the right number of people and the right kind of people at the right place, at the right time, and doing the right things for which they are suited for the achievement of the organization’s goals.

Duration: 4 – 6 Weeks

Deliverables:

• Strategy assessment
• Hosted focus group discussions
  • Identify the current condition of each working unit’s workload (Underload, Target, Overload)
  • Preliminary thoughts/solutions to problems related to business process or organization structure
    • Size / Expansion
    • Process improvement
    • Business targets
• Gap and quantitative analysis
  • Job groups: 2% SVP, 5% VP, 8% SMG, 15% MGR, 25% SPV; 45% Other
  • Employee demographics by group, function, and location
  • Turnover by demographic
  • Employee career opportunity
• Gap closing stategy