Compensation and Benefits Essentials
Pay decisions made one at a time, under offer pressure, produce a salary structure nobody can explain and cannot defend when staff compare notes. This two-day programme builds the structure instead. Participants evaluate jobs, design grades and salary ranges, benchmark against market data without misreading it, work through the statutory contributions and their thresholds, design variable pay that rewards the behaviour intended, and run a full annual salary review against a fixed budget.
The programme stays practical rather than actuarial. Participants work through job evaluation, build a salary structure with grades and ranges, test it against market data, and model the cost of an increment cycle before it goes to the board.
HRD Corp SBL-Khas Claimable
Programme Agenda
9:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Welcome and Programme Overview
Introduction to the session, objectives, and housekeeping.
9:15 AM - 9:45 AM
What a Reward Strategy Has to Balance
Internal equity, external competitiveness, affordability and the behaviour you want to encourage. Total reward beyond base pay, and choosing where in the market you intend to sit and why.
9:45 AM - 10:15 AM
Job Evaluation and Grading
Ranking, classification and point-factor methods. Running a point-factor evaluation on real roles, building a job hierarchy from the results, and collapsing it into a workable number of grades. Avoiding evaluation of the person instead of the job.
10:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Break
10:30 AM - 11:10 AM
Salary Structures, Ranges and Midpoints
Designing grade minimum, midpoint and maximum. Range spread and overlap, compa-ratio, and reading a scatter of actual salaries against the new structure. Handling green-circled and red-circled employees without breaking trust or the budget.
11:10 AM - 11:50 AM
Market Benchmarking Done Properly
Salary survey sources available in Malaysia, matching your jobs to survey jobs honestly, and reading percentiles, medians and market ratios without overinterpreting thin sample sizes. Why job titles are the least reliable basis for a match.
11:50 AM - 12:30 PM
Statutory Contributions and Payroll Compliance
EPF, SOCSO and EIS obligations, contribution thresholds and treatment of allowances. Monthly tax deduction, taxable and non-taxable benefits, and where allowance design quietly creates a compliance or tax problem.
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Lunch
1:30 PM - 2:05 PM
Allowances, Benefits and Leave Policy Design
Building a benefits package that is valued rather than merely expensive. Medical, insurance, transport and housing allowances, flexible benefits, and reviewing what your people actually use against what you actually spend.
2:05 PM - 2:40 PM
Variable Pay, Bonus and Incentive Design
Company, team and individual performance weighting. Bonus pool funding, distribution mechanics, sales commission design and its predictable distortions, and long-term incentives. Testing a scheme against the behaviour it will really produce.
2:40 PM - 3:15 PM
Running the Annual Salary Review
Merit matrices linking increment to performance and position in range, promotion increases, market adjustments, and modelling the total cost before committing. Participants run a full review against a fixed budget on real data.
3:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Break
3:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Pay Communication and Pay Equity
Explaining a pay decision without disclosing anyone else's salary, training managers to hold the conversation, and responding when an employee brings a competitor offer. Reviewing for gender and other pay gaps, and the discrimination provisions in the 2022 Employment Act amendments.
4:10 PM - 4:45 PM
Workshop: Build a Structure End to End
Working from a case organisation, participants evaluate jobs, build grades and ranges, benchmark, place current salaries, cost the gaps, and present a phased implementation plan with the trade-offs made explicit.
4:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Wrap-Up and Q&A
Key takeaways, next steps, and close.
Key Outcomes
- Evaluate jobs and build a defensible grade structure
- Design salary ranges with sensible spread, overlap and midpoints
- Benchmark against Malaysian survey data without misreading it
- Apply EPF, SOCSO, EIS and MTD rules to pay and allowance design
- Design a benefits package your people actually value
- Build variable pay that rewards the behaviour you intended
- Run an annual salary review inside a fixed budget
- Explain a pay decision and review your structure for pay gaps
Training Mode Physical / Online / Hybrid / e-learning
HRD Corp SBL-Khas Claimable
Level Basic to intermediate. Suitable for HR executives and managers, finance staff who review payroll cost, and business owners setting pay for the first time.
Duration 1 Day (8 Hours) | 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Venue In-house at the client's premises, or delivered via the client's preferred platform (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or equivalent)
Assessment A drafted salary structure with grades and ranges, and a costed increment model
Certificate Certificate of Completion issued to all participants upon full attendance