Men focus on cash, women on total rewards: EY

This survey of the research and consultancy firm EY India explodes many myths on employee compensation and rewards and offers a peek into how divergent the views of the employers is with his staff.

To begin with, the EY Rewards Survey 2016 that polled 128 employers and 452 employees, shows there was a huge gap between how the two perceived the compensation being offered compared to peers in the market.
While 66% employers thought the pay package they offered were competitive in relation to the peers, only 48% of the employees felt the same way.

The outcome was somewhat similar when it came to how "happy" they were with the current pay scales with 66% owners or management of companies giving a thumbs-up and only 52% employees voting with a yay.

The pay package survey, whose respondents constituted of 68% male and 32% female, reveals that women employees were more content with the rewards then men employees and how differently each gender perceived rewards programmes.

"Men tend to pay more attention to the cash offering of the employment contract while women tend to focus on the complete reward offering by employers," it said.

Interestingly, the hirer and the hired are on the almost same page on what determined the salary with over 60% of the respondents in both group saying they were clear on what factors affected their compensation.

In this regard, there was highest level of clarity in the financial services (FS) sector at 72% followed by Industrial Infrastructure and Consumer (IIC) industry.

The survey, which was conducted in five metros including Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), Hyderabad and Mumbai, attributes it to stringent "regulatory environment" in the FS sector.

"Given the strict regulatory environment that FS industry operates in, it is imperative that the rewards programme is well communicated," states the survey's executive summary.

Their views were again widely dissimilar on performance impacting remunerations with 76% of the employers believing there was strong correlation between the two and only 55% of the employees feeling the same way.

The degree of satisfaction over the compensation earned varied in different employee age group. Amongst the millennial employees – below 30 years – the level of contentment was low while it was the highest in age bracket of 30-35 years, dipping again for employees between the age of 35 years and 45 years.

Explaining why the satisfaction peaked in the mid-career phase of an employee, the report states; "The 35-45 years age group best represents employees looking to break out of individual contributor roles to take up larger professional roles with more responsibility and hence the corresponding pay grade. Employees in this segment are in the prime of their life and looking to achieve various milestones as part of their personal goals and possibly have an eye on retirement".

The EY survey, which was carried out between February and March this year, also revealed that even as employees and employers agreed that "competitive" take-home pay was the most important component for an effective work environment, they were at different ends on the other factors.

Employees attached importance to quality of manager and leadership, employer's brand and flexible work arrangement, in that order while employers felt career growth opportunity and job advancement, learning and development opportunity and linkage of pay to performance were factors led to conducive work atmosphere.

The EY report also brings out that one in four or 25% of the employees were dissatisfied with the rewards programmes of their employers.