Rewards Advisory

In the ever-changing world of work, organizations need to make sure that their human capital strategy is fit for the future. The key components of any workforce strategy are the rewards and benefits a company offers. 

Rewards Strategies to Attract and Retain Talent and Skills

Rewards strategies and programs play an important role in shaping an organization’s employee value proposition (EVP). Knowing what rewards packages and compensation to offer will attract and motivate the talent you need. Rewards programs are a useful tool in attracting workforce skills —such as getting the tech talent you want. 

The Challenges for Rewards Professionals

Rewards professionals are facing numerous challenges in the changing world of work. How do you make sure that pay is equitable and follow regulations? How do you ensure that rewards are in line with individual or corporate performance and balanced with bottom-line business results? How do you tailor your rewards and benefits offering and provide what employees really value?

We partner with you to solve these rewards and workforce challenges.

Employee Rewards Advisory

We help our clients create the rewards strategies and programs they need to make the workforce of the future a reality and support the growth of their business.

We help organizations to:

• Align rewards programs to business strategy.
• Build salary structures that balance the needs of market-based, level-based and broad-banded salary structures.
• Rebalance pay mixes as a company matures, leveraging our extensive data sets to anticipate how incentive and equity programs should evolve.
• Assess how well people and pay programs match current market conditions.
• Address the need for pay equity and compliance with new and existing pay transparency regulations.

Aon’s rewards advisory draws on our compensation data and insights. This includes the McLagan and Radford compensation survey platforms. Over 7,500 companies around the world choose to take part in our benchmarks to make better compensation decisions. 

Executive Compensation

Executive compensation programs help attract and retain leaders, align management with shareholder interests and improve shareholder value over the long term. 

Our solutions include:

• End-to-End Executive Compensation - Benchmarking; Design; Valuation; Tracking; Communication; Disclosure; Risk mitigation; Pay-for-performance alignment.
• Business Life Cycle Support - Ramping up; Rapid growth; IPO planning/readiness; Balancing revenue and profitability; Decline/Relaunch; M&A, Bankruptcy.
• Incentive Design Support to Meet Business Needs - Creating a direct link between short- and long-term variable pay and business results; Setting appropriate metrics/goals to align with objectives such as shareholder value creation; Ensuring designs are effective and satisfy proxy advisors and shareholders.

Equity Strategy and Communication

Paying employees with stock is complicated: navigating financial reporting, shareholder perspectives and educating participants. We help companies to use equity compensation effectively.

Our solutions include:

• Design of Equity Plans. Establish a Long-Term Incentive (LTI) plan or Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with a focus on regulatory, shareholder and financial considerations.
• Equity Valuation and Financial Reporting. Demystify the valuation of complex rewards instruments and manage accounting/reporting requirements.
• Communication and Analytics. Drive home the value of your stock plans with a communications package including PeerTracker — our online platform for tracking and communicating performance-based awards with Relative Total Shareholder Return (TSR) metrics. We also offer EquiTV — an Aon platform that lets you create personalized, branded employee education videos and other tailored communications.
• One-Time Events. Our team of valuation, accounting, governance and tax experts is there to support you with one-time events such as modifications to option exchanges, or corporate transactions.

Corporate Governance

We partner with public and private companies to navigate complex and routine board, investor and proxy advisory firm issues and policies. Our team has corporate governance experience and consists of former ISS, Glass Lewis and institutional investor proxy voting professionals, as well as legal and regulatory specialists.

Our solutions include:

• Proxy Advisory Firm Solutions. Say-on-Pay Consulting; Share Plan Consulting; Proxy Graphics Consulting; Annual Governance Audits.
• Shareholder Outreach Services. Investor intelligence consulting; Talking points and strategy consulting; Disclosure-related engagement consulting.
• Regulatory and Compliance Services. Risk assessment services; Employee agreement and plan related services for private and public companies; Inducement pool services; Board evaluation services; Director education services.

Career and Job Architecture

A robust job architecture and career framework can create a work environment that supports employee development and retention. Job architecture provides a clear organizational structure for jobs, skills, and careers in a company of any size.

Our solutions include:

Job Architecture:

• Auditing your job levels and creating a unified approach to defining levels, job codes and titling conventions across the company.
• Creating a consistent job library of every job code and job description that's easily accessible to HR and people managers, and transferable to current and future HRIS systems.

Career Frameworks

• Defining a clear set of skills, competencies and experiences at each step.
• Creating competency models to define the skills and knowledge required for all positions.
• Developing clear career paths to support staff development.
• Building a robust job architecture to standardize leveling criteria across functions, aligning career levels with the market and providing a scalable model.

Private Company Compensation

We work with companies at every stage of their development: from seed to IPO and beyond. Our capabilities help you access benchmarking data, lay the groundwork for scalable hiring and work with your board to prepare for an IPO.

Our solutions include:

In the Start Up Phase our work typically includes:

• Conducting internal and external compensation assessments
• Creating basic job definitions and leveling criteria
• Building initial salary structures
• Developing equity grant guidelines
• Establishing performance management systems

In the Development Phase we partner with clients to:

• Navigate new rounds of financing
• Upgrade core compensation systems
• Prepare for international expansion
• Prepare for commercial growth
• Establish a compensation committee

In the Private to Public Market Transition we partner with clients to:

• Create and complete an IPO checklist
• Benchmark rewards at every phase of an IPO
• Design new equity plans

Sales Compensation Advisory

We help companies maximize the investment in their salespeople with sales compensation plans that are competitive and aligned with corporate objectives including across:

• Competitive Benchmarking
• Incentive Plan Assessments
• Incentive Plan Design
• Sales Plan Implementation
• Advanced Sales Metrics

Total Rewards

Employee expectations are changing. They need to be balanced with bottom-line business results. A Total Rewards program that covers all aspects of compensation, benefits, talent strategy and your Employee Value Proposition will address this challenge. See how Aon can support your Total Rewards program.