Communicating with your Payees

Plan Communicator is an easy-to-use tool that allows the Compensation administrator to manage two-way communication about compensation plans with payees. It has two modules: Document Distribution and Dispute Management.

The Document Distribution comprises Plan Documents and Other Documents.

Both modules include the ability to customize communications and create a basic workflow.

Plan Communicator can be used to:

• Create and distribute plan documents.
• Create a document distribution workflow.
• Track the acceptance of plan documents.
• Create and Track Disputes.

Dashboards are a fast and easy way to retrieve the information that matters to the end user the most. They comprise a collection of widgets arranged on a single screen to provide payees with a comprehensive, interactive compensation overview.

Each of these features is enabled by default, but they can be enabled or disabled in Sales Performance Home → Global Settings.

The Document Distribution tool allows an administrator to create and distribute documents to payees using a basic workflow. You can create two types of documents to distribute:

• Plan documents are dynamic documents that can be distributed to each individual payee to communicate details of their individualized plan. To create a Plan document, set the form type to Plan.
• Other documents allow you to distribute static documents, such as employee manuals or non-disclosure agreements, to your payees for acceptance. Usually, these documents are distributed as PDF files. To create a static document, set the form type to Other.

The image above shows a Plan document. The Document workspace works much like a text editor. Use the toolbar to customize the form, insert a logo, and change the formatting.

Once you select a Compensation Plan, it will populate the compensation elements used within that plan. You can then insert those values into the document.

Now that you have created one or more documents, you can set up a Distribution. A distribution packages multiple documents and configures the workflow before distributing them to your payees. You can add up to five documents to a distribution.

The Workflow Feature in Plan Communicator is designed to allow business users to easily configure a process in which a set of documents is approved and distributed to each payee for acceptance before a plan is put into effect each fiscal year. In the Workflow Feature figure, we have included a few requirements in the workflow:

• The payee’s immediate manager (1 level of approval) must accept the plan before it is distributed to the payee.
• The payee must accept the plan within three business days, excluding weekends and holidays. If they do not accept the plan, they will receive a daily reminder until they do so.

The Distributions workspace can be found under Manage Plans → Plan Communicator Distributions.

Once the distribution is created, the plan document can be distributed to all payees in the Distributions workspace.

The payee receives an email with a link to a plan document, which they can view and download to a PDF before accepting.

Selecting the Send to Administrator link starts a workflow with the compensation team to address any questions about the plan.

Administrators can view the status in the Distributions Tracking workspace. This list can be filtered by Distribution, Status, Position, or Participant. This workspace can be found under Plan Communicator → Distributions Tracking.

The Disputes feature streamlines and automates the resolution of disputes and inquiries between payees and the Compensation administrator. Payees can submit inquiries in the Incentive Management Portal or a report or dashboard. These initiate a workflow that is visible at all stages.

The Disputes feature includes a set of pre-configured templates, and the administrator can create new templates and configure customized workflows.

The benefits of Dispute Management include:

• Streamlining the dispute process.
• Providing transparency.
• Allowing all stakeholders to view status in real-time.

If the payee suspects an error in their compensation payment, they can submit a dispute electronically. Once they submit the dispute, their direct manager or other approver will be notified.

The manager can either approve, reject, or request more information before sending it to the compensation team for resolution. At any point in the process, the payee can see the status of the dispute in the Incentive Management Portal, and the administrator can view existing disputes in the Disputes Tracking workspace.

The Dispute Workflow is similar to the document distribution workflow but with a bottom-up structure optimized to allow a payee to submit a dispute for delivery to the compensation team.

In the Dispute Workflow figure, when a payee submits a dispute, it must first be approved by their first-level manager before being assigned to the resolver, who is typically a member of the compensation team. The resolver then has three business days to research and resolve the dispute.

Dashboards are an easy and intuitive way to communicate compensation results and other information to payees, giving them access to the information that matters to them the most.

The Compensation administrator creates and maintains various dashboards using the Dashboards page in the Incentive Management Portal. Dashboards can be created for all payees who share a plan or all payees who share a title. In addition, a global dashboard can be shared among all payees.

The Dashboard figure shows a dashboard displaying the results for Terry Callahan for the first six months of 2022.

Dashboards are created using Widgets. A Widget is a window that contains a single piece of data for display in a dashboard. Examples of widgets in the image below are My Profile, Product Sales Revenue, and Team Ranking.

One of the major advantages of dashboards is that they allow payees to view their data in dynamic ways without allowing them to change the widgets. Payees can download chart images in PDF, JPG, PNG, and SVG formats by selecting the menu in the upper right corner of the widget.