3 November 2020

Total compensation: a way to reward your employees

people discuss a report in an office; one person points with a pen at a laptop

Table of contents

When an employee chooses to work for a particular company, he or she does so for a variety of reasons. These reasons are not only related to remuneration, but also include other elements of vital importance for the employee to come to the same office day after day. All these motivators together are known as the total compensation model.

What is full compensation?

The total compensation is that (monetary or not) that the company provides to its employees for their time, talent, effort and results. It is made up of two clearly differentiated elements.

  • Economic or financial elements: whether direct remuneration such as wages or indirect remuneration such as social benefits and remuneration in kind.
  • Non-economic or intangible elements: which include recognition, flexible working hours, decision-making power and employee career plans, among many other aspects.

How important is full compensation 

Total compensation should be approached as the set of remuneration elements that the employee receives in return for his or her work. As we have seen, these elements are not only limited to economic or financial ones, but also non-economic and intangible ones play a crucial role. Thus, the importance of total compensation lies in the way in which the employee perceives his or her own work as a whole. In other words, it is an element that has a direct link with the talent retention capacity in companies, which often translates into a low labour turnover

In turn, being able to retain talent and having a low labour turnover is synonymous with higher productivity and greater efficiency, which translates into higher business profits. 

Improving the total compensation employees receive for their work

There are different techniques that will help us to improve total workers' compensation. To do this, it is necessary to approach the issue from several perspectives, some of them focusing on the economic elements and others on the non-economic ones. 

Smooth communication between employee and human resources

The best way to improve the total compensation an employee receives for his or her work is to understand his or her needs. To do this, the best way to achieve this is by ask them directly what they need or what aspects of their work they think could be improved. In this way, by conducting employee surveys and interviews, the strengths and weaknesses of each job position can be identified, which will provide insight into the level of total compensation offered to each employee. 

Flexibility and adaptability

Generally, more flexibility and adaptability at work means better total compensation. This is because, since it is the employee himself who has this flexibility and adaptability, it is he who chooses the way of working that is best for him. suits your needs or lifestyle. Encouraging smart working, freedom of working hours, as well as giving employees more decision-making power, are some of the ways to implement this greater flexibility and adaptability in the working environment. 

Focusing on social benefits

In addition to wages, the social benefits are another of the economic elements that play a decisive role in the total compensation that the employee receives for his or her work. In this sense, solutions such as Childcare Ticket, Transport Ticket o Ticket Restaurant, and others, help the employee's perception of the job to improve considerably. This translates into higher total compensation, which is also easy to identify as it is closely linked to concrete and tangible aspects.


Edenred Spain