Compensating Employees

Benefits Wages

An adequate benefits & wages tracking system is a small business essential. If your company is lacking in the area of benefits/wages reporting, here a few tips to get you headed in the right direction.

Employee wage and benefit reporting is just one of the HR tasks that have to occur in your small business.

But it's a task that can't be taken for granted. All it takes is a single recordkeeping mistake to introduce confusion that lingers for multiple pay periods or even years before it is noticed and corrected.

There are a lot of valid reasons why it's essential to maintain accurate records of your employees' benefits and wages. From tax reporting to time tracking, employers have both financial and functional incentives to create benefits/wages reporting mechanisms. In addition to applying benefits & wages forms to their internal HR processes, many employers also use their form as an HR communication tool for their workers.

The bottom line is that a good benefits wages tracking form can make your company a more profitable and productive. The final design of your form is entirely up to you, but here are a handful of the ways it can be used to benefit your company.

• HR standardization. Record standardization is a common HR objective. Personnel files that lack appropriate standardization muddle record information retrieval efforts and could result in legal entanglements related to wage or benefits discrepancies. Benefits/wages forms create uniform reporting tools that reduce risk and unnecessary clutter.
• Managerial review. Managers, supervisors and owners frequently rely on benefits and wage tracking forms to monitor employee compensation and benefits during the annual review process. But they are also a useful reference that can be used when an employee requests a pay raise or concession outside of the annual review routine.
• Employee review. Employees should receive a copy of their individual benefits and wage form. By receiving the form, they have the opportunity to review their compensation for discrepancies and track individual benefits like vacation time, sick days and more.
• Labor forecasting. Consistent benefits wage monitoring can lay the groundwork for comprehensive labor forecasting models, especially in a work environment where hourly rates or overtime are commonplace. Although tracking forms may not include hours worked, they provide valuable information about the hourly rates of individuals who are deployed in specific business areas and make it easier for managers to conduct forecasts or redeployment strategies.

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