What does a reward specialist do?

Reward specialists are experts in the pay and benefits that an organisation gives to its employees, consultants and contractors.  They work with all aspects of reward – not just pay – so have a good understanding of other benefits such as the organisation’s pension offer, any health benefits, employee support helplines and other perks that organisations offer as part of their reward package.  

Part of the skill of being a reward specialist is being able to combine the different aspects of pay and benefits into a framework which is attractive to potential employees, but also affordable for the organisation.  This is why benchmarking is a really important skill: understanding national and international pay scales and where your organisation sits relative to competitors is critical, as is understanding what potential employees look for in an organisation.  This is one of the reasons why the reward framework can significantly impact how people perceive the employer brand  

Your typical activities 

Here are some of the activities you can expect to be involved in as a reward specialist: 

• Carrying out salary benchmarking to understand your organisation’s position in the market
• Determining pay points for roles at all levels and in a range of job families
• Designing approaches to executive remuneration and specialist roles
• Designing total reward approaches, to include a range of pay and benefits
• Reviewing benefits packages and identifying new benefits which increase the attraction and brand of the organisation
• Working with external partners on the design and management of employee benefits (such as employee support programmes provided by external suppliers)
• Reporting on your organisation’s reward packages and pay

Types of roles in reward

Here is a shortlist of the types of job titles you might find in reward. As you can see, reward specialist are at all levels of experience and seniority: 

• Reward administrator
• Benefits co‐ordinator 
• Compensation and benefits advisor 
• Reward analyst 
• Reward and benefits manager 
• Head of reward 
• Director of reward