REWARD Worldwide Debuts at ACA 2000

"In this era of tight labor markets and global competition, compensation professionals need a tool that will help them better coordinate large staffs operating in several locations worldwide."

REWARD Worldwide is a strategic software system that helps organizations streamline their compensation management by enabling users to market-price, analyze, and compare jobs within an organization. REWARD also lets users define and model salary structures, and track incentive pay and total compensation. This advanced system also:

	Enables users to access and share the same database at anytime, from multiple locations worldwide
	Offers complete data security
	Delivers instant access to the latest ECS surveys
	Generates hundreds of reports to any local or network printer
	Ensures automatic, instant system upgrades

"In this era of tight labor markets and global competition, compensation professionals need a tool that will help them better coordinate large staffs operating in several locations worldwide," says Rick Dalton, senior consultant for Watson Wyatt. "REWARD Worldwide will enable users to leverage their expertise even further by enabling compensation managers to share and utilize aggregate data from multiple locations."

REWARD Worldwide will accommodate organizations with large employee populations or those that need to coordinate work of separate compensation staffs globally. The Watson Wyatt Data Center hosts REWARD Worldwide clients’ data on high-speed, high-capacity servers. To ensure maximum protection, Data Centers employ state-of-the-art security measures, including Checkpoint firewall protection and the Real Secure intrusion-detection system.

Built for a Windows 95, 98 or NT system, REWARD Worldwide is a relational database system with a sophisticated, graphical user interface (GUI). The system imports market data from most salary survey sources (including Watson Wyatt Data Services). Designed to work seamlessly with Microsoft Office applications, REWARD data can be transferred to or from MS Access, MS Excel, MS Word, and MS PowerPoint. For more information on this new system, refer to the Worldwide page.

Watch REWARD 3.0 Grow!

"REWARD 3.0 represents a new generation of compensation management systems... because it offers leading-edge features packaged in a system that costs substantially less to install than any other similar system now available."

REWARD 3.0, the next-generation system for compensation management continues to gain wide acceptance in the market place. First unveiled at the 1999 American Compensation Association's International Conference and Exposition on May 2-5 in Boston, Watson Wyatt consultants claim that REWARD 3.0 is now the single best answer to the demand for more efficient and effective compensation planning for increasingly competitive skilled-labor markets. For a detailed summary of version 3.0, refer to the REWARD 3.0 page.

REWARD 3.0 takes total advantage of a 32-bit architecture that delivers more processing power, speed, and flexibility than was available in earlier version of the software. On top of its 32-bit foundation, the 3.0 system offers several innovations like a tabbed-screen user interface, fully automated imports of ECS survey data, spell-checking, new survey analysis reports, report delivery via an organization's Intranet, new competency pay tools, streamlined system installations and upgrades, and more.

REWARD includes a library of more than 60 standard reports—plus an Ad Hoc report writer. And because reports can be generated as HTML pages, you can load the HTML report pages on an intranet server for easy report access throughout your organization.

REWARD is a strategic software system for advanced compensation management. Watson Wyatt introduced its first compensation software in the early 1980s. Then, in 1992, building on their extensive experience in this area, Watson Wyatt introduced the REWARD system. Mr. Engel asserts that "This is the software of choice of Fortune 1000 companies—a best-in-class system that delivers superior value."

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REWARD Bookstore & Café:
A Unique Resting Spot

Kick back, take a break from your hectic schedule, and drop into REWARD's Bookstore and Café. It's right around the corner at www.watsonwyatt.com/reward. Just click the Bookstore & Café button on the Home screen--it's open 24 hours a day!

In this cyber café, you can enjoy some java or other beverage of your choice while you browse selected books on compensation theory and practice. And, if you see something interesting, you can order it directly through Amazon.com where you will find substantial discounts on most book orders. You can even check out current events: the café's newspaper rack carries the current editions of major papers from around the world. Visit soon!
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Power to the (Right) People

As REWARD users and strategic rewards clients and consultants, you help us cover the issues and trends that are important to you. In each issue of this online journal, we invite you to share your valuable insights and opinions. This journal is designed for you. Stay in touch!

REWARD is a specialized tool designed for compensation professionals. This small group of specialized users can log into the software via their LAN: access only as wide as their need and specialized skills. Clearly, only a few people in an organization should be able to write and edit certain compensation data. For others, like line managers who need to have access to processing results, REWARD makes it easy for many people to be able to read the market-pricing data.

If you hear the "enterprise-wide" label attributed to an application like a compensation administration system, be careful! It might sound like a system that delivers "power to the people." But ask yourself, "Will it give power to the right people?"
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Distributing Compensation Data: Intranet & E-mail

For more information on how you can use REWARD 3.0 for report distribution via an intranet, refer to the Support Knowledge Base KB4.

With REWARD 3.0, you can easily create enterprise-wide communications. You can employ your intranet to disseminate the results of market pricing processing. For example, line managers frequently ask questions like "Why are you (HR) saying job X is worth $Y in the marketplace?" Instead of responding to these types of inquiries with ad hoc responses, you can use REWARD to easily and quickly publish comprehensive reports to all interested parties. Assuming that appropriate security safeguards are in place so that only managers have access to the data, REWARD gives you single-button control for intranet publishing.

If you do not have an intranet, you can still disseminate "smart" reports in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF) via email. Using Adobe's free Acrobat Reader, managers can quickly read, print, search, even copy-and-paste the data in REWARD's reports. For example, you could easily email a single PDF file that contains data for all benchmark jobs. Then, with the Acrobat Reader, managers could quickly search for the exact data they want. You could even publish a How To guide that explains the procedures for installing the reader, opening any PDF file, and searching for specific jobs—either by job code or job title.

Because REWARD is designed for seamless integration in a Windows environment, you can expect data formats that are compatible with all of your primary enterprise applications. And because REWARD's report writer uses TrueType fonts and is completely integrated with the whole system, you can expect flawless production of complex or custom reports—even in interactive Acrobat versions. Contrast REWARD's robust design with other systems that use a " WinToClip" program fastened to an X-Base backend. You will probably conclude that the only viable option is REWARD reports—via intranet or email.
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Linking Competencies to Pay

Strategic competencies focus on how employees apply their skills and knowledge—not merely a laundry list of what skills they have. The maintenance of detailed lists of skills can quickly lead to the tedious processing of administrivia. In competency-based systems, the point is not the generation and upkeep of lists of skills but on writing accounts of how strategic skills are actually applied.

Because only managers are in a position to know about employees' competencies and business results, only a manager can make an informed decision about an employee’s personal and professional development. So, in a competency-based pay program, you need to efficiently distribute employee competency and compensation information to many managers. REWARD enables managers to:

	Review compensation data for their direct reports—both individually and as a group
	Assess and record employees' competencies
	Evaluate their employees' performance (with respect to their competencies) by recording behavioral observations
	Set their pay (base and variable) based on suggested ranges (based on market data)

REWARD enables you to put the decision-support information and decision functions on the desk of an employee’s manager—effectively addressing the process side of the career growth and pay program designed by you and Watson Wyatt.

For making the conversion from a traditional pay plan to a more strategic pay program, you need a way to match "roles" to existing salary surveys that still speak of "jobs". Again, REWARD can do it. In fact, REWARD supports both traditional and competency-based pay programs, and it offers a proprietary method for spanning the traditional and competency-based data. If you are ready to move to competency-based pay, REWARD is your best bridge to tomorrow.
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Strategic Software for the 21st Century

"...whatever tomorrow's task may be, you are convinced that it will be critical that all the 'moving parts' can continue to work together."

Not surprisingly, the concept of a suite of integrated software applications emerged and quickly took form. Everyone agreed: the suite was far better than the sum of its parts. A happy family, a single tapestry, a seamless integration. People were willing to go through the painful process of migrating from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word if it meant that their word processor, spreadsheet, and graphics programs could communicate with each other. There was widespread agreement that the impressive benefits of seamless integration more than offset the cost of short-term productivity loss as users raced the learning curves like a roller coaster.

Now, years later, everyone acknowledges that the suite concept is the only way to go with software. You never know from day-to-day what you’ll be doing next with your software. But whatever tomorrow's task may be, you are convinced that it will be critical that all the "strategic parts" can continue to work together. So, in these latter days, you demand two things from your software:

1. The application must be the best in its class.
2. The application must work seamlessly with the other software you use everyday.

Quite simply, these two criteria explain why Watson Wyatt chose the Microsoft Office environment to build its compensation-based software: REWARD. You are assured that the software will be 100% compatible with Microsoft operating systems (Windows 3.x, 95, 98, and NT); and that it will work seamlessly with all versions of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Ahhh.. the future could be so bright!

Say that you want to quickly publish a compensation report for the CFO. Imagine just dragging the cursor to select the records you want, and then copying and pasting the data into Word. (Then Word automatically creates and formats a table for you!)

How about performing a special analysis in Excel? Imagine that you merely drag and drop the columns you want, then with one mouse click, Excel starts up and there’s your data! (Plus, the column headings are automatically formatted on the first row to assist your graphing.)

What about distributing a report to hundreds of managers with one click of the button and without paginating for hardcopy printing? Imagine yourself printing your report using Adobe Acrobat and then emailing the PDF file. (Managers can not only quickly preview the report, they can search for a job code or a job title, print the entire report or just selected pages. Or they can copy/paste the data for their own use.)

Is this all some kind of brave new cyber world of the future? No, it's here today in REWARD 3.0. We learned from the past and from our many professional users. Your future has a bright REWARD—well into the 21st century!
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