Critiquing NWC For CUAP’s Establishment And Gender Pay Gap Management: An Armstrong Total Rewards Model

Critiquing NWC for CUAP’s Establishment and Growth

Critique the existing NWC agreement’s suitability for supporting CUAP’s establishment and growth

NWC (National Wage Council) in Singapore sets the guideline to enhance productivity by transforming the organisations and upgrading the skills. NWC marks the improvement in the labour market along with economy to have strong productivity growth. NWC is planning to improve the momentum to continue with the real wage so that the business can sustain in line with the productivity in long-term (Mom.gov.gs, 2018). NWC is to spur the productivity in order to strengthen the capabilities of the organisation to deploy the employees. The main goal of the organisation is to lead to Transform and Grow; however, the organisation is taking advantage of the Enterprise Development Scheme so that the organisations can improve productivity. In Singapore, economic restructuring is continuing and NWC finds out the needs of the employees and employers needs to work closely with the employees.

Internal Research of the employees and feedback from the SIEU provides an indication that staffs have created an opinion that JI has been into nearly bankrupt and the employees will be laid off. The competitors see the opportunity to grab the large clients and high-value staffs; the productivity of CUAP would fall. CUAP will have the skill framework to set up the training committee in order to drive the skills training along with career pathway. CUAP will follow the NWC where the organisation can get the wide-range of Government support under the Adapt and Grow and along with Skills-Future. NWC will also help the CUAP to transform the workplace through progressive employment and digitalisation and human capital development. CUAP is planning to increase in employees’ participation through NWC’s guideline providing support like Career Support Programme and Professional Conversion Programmes. CUAP will take into consideration different business conditions, economic outlook and productivity growth in sectors and firms. NWC reaffirms wages principles which are needed to be sustainable and fair.  

Plans to manage the gender pay gap in CUAP

CUAP is a new organisation and CUAP needs to understand JI’s own glass pyramid and they can benchmark the change. CUAP will look around JI’s data and they focus on the percentage of male and female ratio. JI must not give the idea of promotion gap and CUAP needs to start to mitigate the issue from the HR department. CUAP should start checking out the quality of the organisation’s action plan. JI needs to publish a narrative explanation for the reasons behind the pay gap so that they can fix it. CUAP will accept the responsibility and acknowledge the gender pay gap and the management will brush it aside with sweeping statement. CUAP should conduct the gender pay gap analysis so that the management can look at the salary and bonus. As stated by Pilcher (2017), CUAP management needs to take Equal Pay Pledge which must demonstrate the commitment to equal pay by sharing the results. The HR department of CUAP must make an equitable offer so that the women employees are less likely to negotiate and they will leave less room for negotiation. The women employees can evaluate the pay scale annually and they can become more transparent in the approach towards payment.

Plans to Manage the Gender Pay Gap in CUAP

In addition, the management of CUAP can equalise the performance reviews by understanding promotions, reviews and bonus distribution which can affect the unconscious bias which is related to the behavioural traits. Performance reviews of the organisation provide the manager with the training and controls to ensure men and women must be evaluated fairly (Auspurg, Hinz & Sauer, 2017). Finally, the management can start a conversation with the employees and the management must encourage the female employees to use their voices (Macias & Stephens, 2017). Gender pay equality can be ensured through salary transparency within the organisation CUAP. Gender inequality and Equal Opportunity can be reduced through better training when the senior staffs may need to work harder.

Use Armstrong’s total reward model to outline the rewards planning to use in the CUAP remuneration plan

Armstrong stated that employees must be rewarded both extrinsically and intrinsically and it helps to foster engagement of the employees towards job, positive behaviour and commitment towards the organisation. Extrinsic motivation is about performing behaviour to engage in activities to earn reward in order to avoid punishment. Extrinsic motivation comes from the desire to get something in return (Shields et al., 2015). Intrinsic motivation is involved in engaging in behaviour which is personally rewarding and performs the activity for the sake of the owner’s desire. Flexible benefits plan is associated with the rewards, pay, benefits and learning and development. Total reward model extends the remuneration for just the payment and it must benefit the intrinsic aspect of work. CUAP can take total reward model in order to improve productivity, reduces the staff turnover, helps in recruiting the employees and increase the reputation of the employer both externally and internally. Therefore, CUAP will divide the remuneration plan into two categories, intrinsic and extrinsic so that the employees must be motivated to do the work.

Sales: CUAP will set the remuneration based on the performance of the sales executives. The sales executives will have a fixed salary and the experienced sales employees will be expected to earn an average total compensation higher than others. Based on the performances of the sales executives, the executives will get fringe benefits. Apart from salary and extra benefits, the sales executives will get pension, career opportunities and learning and development opportunity (Rees & Smith, 2017). In each week, the management will provide training to the sales executives.

Claims: Remuneration plan of Claims will be based on the performance and they will have a fixed salary as well. The remuneration plan of Claims will describe the job description and job evaluation of Claims. In the third part, it will describe the job hierarchy and pay survey. CUAP needs to fix the wage and salary differentials in order to prevail the wage and salary rate. Intrinsic factor is associated with the working environment and the Claims must have the work-life balance. Flexible working culture is needed for the employees.

Using Armstrong’s Total Reward Model to Outline Rewards Planning in CUAP

Adjusters: Remuneration plan for the adjusters will also have the two simple components. First, adjusters will establish the appropriate pay level for each job and the management can do grouping the different pay levels. Adjusters will get a fixed salary and the total reward will be provided by providing recognition of achievements and company culture.

What type of strategic goals should the new enterprise pursue? How will you use remuneration and benefits going to support this?

Strategy formulation is important for the well-being of the new company. There are mainly two types of strategies; corporate strategy where the management decides which line the business needs to engage, the second strategy is about the competitive strategy that sets the framework to achieve success in particular business (Rappai, 2016). JI plans to separate the CUAP and the management can take both corporate strategy and competitive strategy. The team of JI drafts the ideal workflows and structure of the organisation to exceed or equal the competitors. In addition, Value Based system model of remuneration is followed by the organisations where the organisations earn the profit based on the value they add to the clients. Value based system allows the organisation to share the risks and rewards of media investment to make the value the organisations create. Value based system brings greater sense of business into the organisation to make relationship by allowing the organisations to guarantee a break-even point and then the organisations can earn all their profit based on the performance. As stated by Sogaard et al., (2015), value based remuneration model is the future of organisation contracts as it entirely aligns the work of the organisation with clients’ business goals, therefore, all the resources of the organisation are focused on accountable for the value to make profit.

CUAP can take the financial strategic goals of becoming the market leader and provides satisfaction to the customers. Financial strategic goals are also associated with the increased revenues and diversified the revenue stream. CUAP can take the learning and growth of the strategic goals to improve the internal communication, a number of reporting tools, surveying the teams and balance the employees’ utilisation rate. CUAP can also take the strategic goals for the business processes setting the restructure organisation,

The new organisation can set the strategic goal of improving revenue and developing internal communication. The new organisation can set the strategic goal of restructuring the organisations. In order to fulfil the strategic goal of improving the revenue, the management needs to attract and retain talented employees and the management can reward the right behaviours of the employees. The right behaviour of the employees leads to a healthy corporate culture and the motivated employees will help to lead to improve the revenue (Heikkila et al., 2018). Remuneration strategy will help to align the organisation’s strategic objectives and it improves the productivity of the employees. CUAP’s internal communication can be improved through generating the remuneration policy which sets out the guiding principle for the organisation’s remuneration strategy. CUAP can come up with the remuneration committee which provides the governance across the organisation’s remuneration strategy. Remuneration Committee assists to set the compensation, incentives and bonuses.

Reference List

Auspurg, K., Hinz, T. & Sauer, C., (2017). Why should women get less? Evidence on the gender pay gap from multifactorial survey experiments. American Sociological Review, 82(1), 179-210.

Heikkilä, M., Bouwman, H., & Heikkilä, J. (2018). From strategic goals to business model innovation paths: an exploratory study. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 25(1), 107-128.

Macias, A., & Stephens, S. (2017). Intersectionality in the field of education: A critical look at race, gender, treatment, pay, and leadership. Journal of Latinos and Education, 1-7.

NWC Guidelines. (2018). Retrieved from: https://www.mom.gov.sg/newsroom/press-releases/2018/0531-national-wages-council-2018-2019-guidelines

Pepper, S. (2016). Senior executive reward: key models and practices. London: Gower.

Pilcher, J. (2017). Women of their time: generation, gender issues and feminism. Abingdon: Routledge.

Rappai, G. (2016). Europe en route to 2020: A new way of evaluating the overall fulfilment of the Europe 2020 strategic goals. Social Indicators Research, 129(1), 77-93.

Rees, G. & Smith, P. eds., (2017). Strategic human resource management: An international perspective. London: Sage.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., … & Plimmer, G. (2015). Managing employee performance & reward: Concepts, practices, strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Sogaard, R., Kristensen, S. R., & Bech, M. (2015). Incentivising effort in governance of public hospitals: Development of a delegation-based alternative to activity-based remuneration. Health Policy, 119(8), 1076-1085