We should define "fair compensation" as a general guideline to paying employees for their service based on knowledge, experience and education in partnership with the average pay for the same position for the geographical area they are employed in. Fair compensation should include but not be limited to wages which is a direct form of financial compensation but the indirect financial compensation such as medical benefits, tuition reimbursement or daycare assistance packages as well.

Fair compensation is not only part of the hiring process but a part of the continued employment process as well. If you are looking to start a new employee the Human Resource department should have already conducted research based on average rate of pay for similar job titles, assessed how much increased value they have placed on the candidate to determine if they would be offered a higher employment offer than their competitors. Conducting internal and external surveys of what people in that position feel they do as a daily job description and what value they believe the position is worth also helps in gauging if the compensation is fair. After all if 90% of internal and external surveys come back and show that the position is overwhelming with work load for minimal pay the company may need to reconsider compensation or delegating some of the work load elsewhere to keep the compensation fair.

If you are thinking of compensation for current staffing with regards to pay raises, bonuses or commissions the organization should work with multi-tiered evaluations. For example each quarter every employee should have a basic review giving them appreciation for their strengths and letting them know where they could show improvement. The employees and managers should work together to form a plan of action for the needed improvements, give a time frame for completion and discuss the potential of what could happen if the employee succeeds in the tasks or not. Each employee should have a mid year reviewe showing if they are on track to hit their highest performance for they year and maximizing their bonus or raise potential and going over what they need to do to obtain their financial goals. At the end of each year the employees have their final appraisal and go over their performance for the year and discuss why what they received was fair compensation based on their performance.

I also believe that an organization should be more aware and responsible when it comes to the cost of living in their geographic area and consider that if minimum wage has increased they should then also increase their staffs pay by a similar amount. I have seen many employees become disgruntled because someone was hired at a higher wage then they are making for the same job and have been with the company for 4 years. If McDonalds changes their starting salary to $10hr, which in my area is an increase of $1.50 and most employees have been their for at least a year and are only making $9hr, those employees should also get a fair wage increase to $10.50 to compensate for their time vested in the company. It benefits the employer as well because it takes more money to train new employees than it does to maintain existing ones.