A beverage company was in the process of starting operations in India, and was

keen to establish

its reward strategy and structure. It had a mix of local and expatriate staff and the reward models were different for different employee profiles, with some being retained staff, some on payroll and some on expatriate structures. The need was to establish an equitable and consistent rewards framework to drive employee motivation and retention.

We initiated the exercise with a rewards workshop with the leadership team in order to identify the key drivers and expectations from rewards. Being a start-up, there were clear cost constraints that existed in line with investor expectations, and our approach centered on ensuring competitiveness through pay at risk

. The rewards philosophy was defined to ensure competitive positioning with a clear linkage of performance and rewards linked to line of sight and controllable performance measures. The components of the salary structure were defined for different staff profile keeping in mind principles of market prevalence, internal equity, right mix of fixed and variable pay, ease of administration and tax friendliness. This was taken to the employees in a draft manner to seek their inputs/ expectations and clarify concerns to ensure buy-in of the small team from the outset.
The defined rewards strategy and structure was implemented and has found popular acceptance in the team.