Yusuf Mensah· VP, Total Rewards, Ravenna Chemicals
Asked in Compensation ·
I look after reward for a UK insurer with about 3,100 employees. Our ranges run 80–120% of midpoint and the policy says a fully competent person should sit 'around the midpoint', which managers read as anything from 90% to 110%.
When I pulled the data, people rated as meeting expectations with three or more years in role average 38% range penetration, so a compa-ratio of roughly 95%. The executive committee has asked whether that is a problem or simply where we should expect to be.
Do you set an explicit penetration target by time in role, and if so how did you arrive at it?
4 helpful · 3 insightful · 1 agree · 4 replies · 117 views · 4 following
Accepted answer· by Fiona Keller
We publish a guide rather than a target: 0–25% penetration while learning the role, 25–60% when fully competent, above 60% only for sustained high performance or scarce skills. Three years in and meeting expectations, we would expect 40–50%. So 38% is slightly light but not alarming. I would look at the spread before the average. If a third of those people are under 25% you have a real issue hiding inside a respectable mean.
Read in the conversation ↓
Benefits Analyst, Halcyon Financial Group
Accepted answer
We publish a guide rather than a target: 0–25% penetration while learning the role, 25–60% when fully competent, above 60% only for sustained high performance or scarce skills. Three years in and meeting expectations, we would expect 40–50%.
So 38% is slightly light but not alarming. I would look at the spread before the average. If a third of those people are under 25% you have a real issue hiding inside a respectable mean.
Compensation Consultant, Independent
Careful with time in role as the driver. We tried a tenure-based expectation at a Dutch logistics company and the works council read it, quite reasonably, as a seniority scale. Managers then stopped differentiating because the table told them where everyone should be.
Director, Total Rewards, Orchard & Vine
Worth asking what your midpoint represents. If it is set at market median and you have been lagging structure movement by a year, 95% compa-ratio against your midpoint may be nearer 92% against the actual market. That changes the answer you give the committee.
VP, Total Rewards, Ravenna Chemicals
Thanks all. I ran the distribution as suggested and 22% of the group are below 25% penetration, nearly all of them internal promotions from 2021 and 2022. I am taking that to the committee as the finding, with the published guide bands as the proposed remedy, not a single target number.
