Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a director of compensation and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A director of compensation will be tasked with the responsibility of managing and implementing the organization's compensation programs. This person is normally tasked with ensuring that all employees are treated with respect and in fairness when it comes to compensation issues. He/she will ensure that the compensation structure is employee and company friendly.

The director will also get to perform the following roles besides the main role; these include; managing and directing all staffs involved in handling compensation issues; ensuring that all company compensation structure complies with the laid down rules and regulations, monitor and document all compensational activities, and help in establishing compensation budgets.

Core Skills Required to be a Director of Compensation

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A director of compensation should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Inspiring others:

Inspiring is encouraging one to be their best in contributing to the vision of an organization where they are placed and entrusted to work.

A Director of Compensation must create a culture where the staff can use their professional prowess and aspire to be the best by giving them a clear vision and purpose through decisive leadership that motivates and inspires them.

Strategic Planning:

Strategic Planning is organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations while guaranteeing that employees and other stakeholders are working towards common goals.

A Director of Compensation should be liable to develop the systematic tools to be used in the organization's processes that coordinate and align resources and actions with the mission, vision, and strategy throughout the organization.

Appraisal and Evaluation Skills:

Appraisal and Evaluation Skills are services that allow employers to assess their employees? contributions to the organization for the period they have been working with them.

A Director of Compensation must creatively develop a robust evaluation process that includes the standard evaluation form, approved performance measures, guidelines for presenting feedback and disciplinary procedures to promote staff recognition and rewarding following a fair assessment and appraisal process.

Assertiveness:

Assertiveness is the inclination to stand up for your rights or other people's rights in a calm and concrete way without being aggressive or accepting a wrong.

A Director of Compensation must be self-assured and confident to master the skills to put his points across without upsetting others or becoming angry and allowing the employees to do the same while complying with the company's policies and procedures.

Emotion Management:

Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.

A Director of Compensation must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.

Emotional Intelligence:

Emotional Intelligence is the capability to identify your emotions, understand what they are telling me and realize how the feelings are affecting you and the people around you.

A Director of Compensation should be wise to handle different personalities that carry different emotions presented in the workplace while ensuring relationships are managed more efficiently by respecting your perception and the employee's as well.

Consistency and Reliability:

Consistency and Reliability are the ability to be trusted to do what you do best all the time with or without supervision and without failure to produce results.

A Director of Compensation is liable to maintain a high level of consistency and reliability by engaging with employees and treating them with respect deserved which produces excellent results in various kinds of reliability coefficients.

Personal Commitment:

Personal Commitment is an obligation that you have voluntarily agreed to fulfill without being cajoled or threatened and are willing to be held accountable for the results.

A Director of Compensation ought to understand that though adopting new policies and procedures will be met with resistance, the approach by which safety standards are implemented and enforced influences employee's attitudes and commitment towards the organization.

Goal and Objective Setting:

Goal and Objective Setting is the strategic plan that is set and laid down identifying how goals should be accomplished, by who and by what time.

A Director of Compensation must detect and schedule each employee's goals, strategy, and objectives and keep motivating them to ensure all of them are met within the set time bringing growth to both the company and the employee.

Entrepreneurial Thinking:

Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.

A Director of Compensation should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.

Hard Skills Required to be a Director of Compensation

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A director of compensation should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Director of Compensation: Hard skills list

Analytical
Analysis
Analyzing Information
Business Acumen
Benefits Administration
Benefits Packages
Benefits Plans
Benefit Strategies
Budgeting
Business-wise
Classifying Employees
Client Facing
Communication
Compensation and Wage Structure
Computer
Costs Control
Customer Service
Delegation
Designing
Design Compensation
Employment Law
Financial
Financial Management
Financial Planning
Implementing
Interpersonal
IT
Maintaining Employee Files
Management of Financial Resources
Management of Material Resources
Managerial
Mathematics
Monitoring
MS Excel
MS PowerPoint
Negotiating and administering healthcare and retirement plans
Numerical
Organizational Astuteness
Presentation
Process Budgeting
Project Management
Research
Retaining Employees
Structuring compensation
Technical and Functional Expertise
Technology
Time Management
Verbal Communication
Word Processing
Writing

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