Robert J. O’Hara, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s New York office, was quoted in HR Dive, in “How to Write a Total Compensation Statement,” by Jen A. Miller.

Following is an excerpt:

Pay transparency goes beyond just sharing salary ranges with potential job candidates. It also includes showing employees how they are being compensated for their work, experts told HR Dive.

To do that, employers are using total compensation — or total rewards — statements to draw the big picture when it comes to showing workers how they’re being paid, beyond just a base salary.

These statements can be beneficial in terms of employee engagement, talent attraction and retention, said Bob O’Hara, member of the firm Epstein Becker Green. They show that employers are dedicated to pay transparency, and also educate workers on how they’re truly being compensated. “If you’re really trying to be transparent with your people, you put down the big numbers to show that this is the overall value proposition for us having you in our workforce. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” he said. …

For total compensation statements to be effective, they first need to be accurate, the sources said. Including things like the value of insurance benefits, stock options, paid vacation days and cell phone service makes sense. Turning over the couch cushions for every single potential cent of benefit does not.

“You can’t go overboard and take free coffee and count that in total rewards,” said O’Hara; this might seem like a minor quibble, but adding too many perks that aren’t truly part of compensation can open companies up to accusations of fraud and lawsuits.

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