Performance Considerations for Workforce Compensation Plans

You need to consider how responsive workforce compensation plans are when determining how many plans to create. Plans can include a few or many simple dynamic calculations and few or many complex calculations. The more dynamic calculations and the more complex the calculations, the slower the plans respond when people change different values.

To optimize plan performance, you want to create plans tailored to specific audiences. For example, compensation administrators want to optimize compensation budgets and allocations across their client groups. They typically need more information to test different allocation scenarios beyond what the modeling functionality can handle. Line managers though want the absolute minimum information that they need to make appropriate allocations across their teams. And they want any contextual or background information about their people in reports or a detailed worksheet that they can look at separately, as needed.

You create separate plans for each audience. The plans for compensation administrators include the dynamic calculations and fast formulas that can slow plan performance. The plans for line managers include cross-references to key calculations in the administrator plans, so the managers can see critical calculation results. And manager plans can include fewer dynamic calculations with simpler conditions, as appropriate. Or you might let managers use models to explore allocation scenarios instead of configuring dynamic calculations for their plans.

To further optimize plan performance, you want to validate each plan. Validation lets you check that the evaluation order for dynamic columns is correct and generates the results expected by the plan audience. It also helps you determine the optimal number of dynamic calculations and alerts to include so the plan responds as each audience considers acceptable.