Men focus on cash, women on total reward: EY study

Men tend to pay more attention to the cash offering of their employment contracts, while women tend to focus on the complete reward offering, said EY Rewards Survey 2016. Complete rewards include fixed pay plus variable pay and other benefits.

As much as 66 per cent of women cited satisfaction with their pay as compared to 50 per cent of men, since women tend to view it as a complete package, where benefits are assigned more value than any other reward components.

The financial services (FS) sector faired best in the 'sense check': Employer responses to the survey matched more closely to employee responses, as compared to responses from the industrial, infrastructure and consumer (IIC) sector and the technology, media and telecommunication (TMT) sector. Given the strict regulatory environment that the FS sector operates in, the survey said it is imperative that the rewards programme is well-communicated.
 

Employees in organisations with fewer than 250 people come across as the most satisfied with their rewards programme, according to the survey. The level of satisfaction gradually decreases in larger organisations. EY said this could be attributed to the fact that custodians of rewards processes and policies are probably very well connected with employees in smaller organisations and are able to customise rewards offerings to match the employees' needs.

With respect to an effective work environment, employers gave monthly take-home pay top priority, as also employees.

Employees looked at quality of managers, brand, flexible work arrangements, and variable pay/bonuses as other top elements. Employers looked at career growth opportunities and job advancement, learning and development opportunities, variable pay, and linkage of pay to performance as other factors.

The survey said 76 per cent of employers believe performance pay closely reflects the individual's performance. But employee opinion is almost equally divided, with senior employees disagreeing more than junior employees.

While an increase in the size of the organisation increased favourable responses from employers, it increased unfavourable responses from employees.

The survey invited views from employers and employees across 12 sectors and saw participation from 128 employers and 452 employees. The data was collected during February-March through a questionnaire deployed online. Responses were collected in person. Employer and employee responses were collected from Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region), Hyderabad, and Mumbai.