5 Reasons You Need a PayBrand Story to Scale Your Business

Great Game® practitioners have many shared values, such as a commitment to High-Involvement Strategic Planning, and the belief that every employee can impact the bottom line. Another shared value, which may at first seem too obvious to mention, is an attention to the numbers.

As Great Game of Business practitioners, we are attentive, even passionate, about the numbers. To successfully scale and grow our business, this passion and thought must apply to all numbers on the balance sheet. Having a “why” behind every employees’ compensation that can be sustained long-term is critical to keeping top talent around and attracting the best new hires.

A PayBrand story combines reliable market data with your organization’s unique values to create a narrative that explains the number on the paycheck to employees and recruits. Here are five reasons your organization needs a PayBrand story:

1. Lack of compensation and professional advancement are top reasons employees leave a company.

Feelings of being underpaid based on inaccurate market data leaves employees more likely to jump ship. A PayBrand story gives the team confidence that the number on their paycheck is based on accurate market data and is driven by your organization’s shared value system.

2. Top performing organizations are more likely to use raises, variable pay, and benefits to increase retention.

Making these decisions based on a standardized, well-defined compensation philosophy increases the likelihood these changes will resonate with employees and won’t bristle any feathers.

3. Lack of pay transparency hurts morale.

33% of employees who were denied a raise report are not being given some rationale for the decision. A good PayBrand story is a guide for employee evaluation and provides a standardized system on when to give (or not give) a raise. Defined expectations for salary increases means fewer disappointments and a clear roadmap for employees to increase what they earn.

4. Only 34% of companies provide a pay range for recruits before making an offer.

This puts employers and candidates in a bargaining arena with zero expectations of what’s expected and without any market data to inform these expectations. An anticipated salary and a transparent range of salaries offered by similar positions make compensation less emotional and more contextualized.

5. Record low unemployment is forcing employers to boost pay and perks and step up recruiting efforts. 

This is all while trying to avoid raising prices. Salary is the first place recruits and employees look to get a gut check if an employer values them. Having a holistic story to plug into removes the mystery and lessens the emotional baggage around the number. This also gives employers the opportunity to share what perks and benefits employees receive outside of traditional compensation, like generous time off policies, flexible schedules and weekly happy hours, giving the number further context.

Compensation is always tricky and, in an employee-driven market, you risk losing essential talent if you don’t get pay right. Drafting your PayBrand story is the first step to aligning your team around a shared vision of fair and data-driven compensation.

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