Compensation and Benefits Strategies Recommendations
Week Three Learning Team “D”
Tamie A. Christmas, Kate Bethea, Benjamin Wendel, Henry Ford
Human Resource Management 531
4/20/2015
Professor Rachelle Tanega

Introduction
Bradley Stonefield, an owner of a small business, is looking to start a limousine service in Austin Texas called Landslide Limousines. He is looking to hire 25 employees by year's end, have projected annual net revenue of $50,000 and begin having 5% revenue growth over the next few years.
Landslide Limousines
Market Evaluation
Due to the economic downturn over the last several years businesses have to restructure their compensation and benefits packages. Before the economic downturn, businesses had a wide variety of packages to offer employees. That has all changed and now companies are finding ways to cut the cost of benefits and find new programs for new and current employees. Today employees have increasing demands to balance work life quality. Employees looking for stronger benefit packages that include health and disability insurance, flexible time, paid time off, retirement plans, and other incentives to join or stay in a business (Cascio (9ed.) (2013) Managing Human Resources).
As a manager starts to design a compensation and benefits package, they must research what the market is doing in their particular business area. For Mr. Stonefield, his current business market can be classified as hospitality/service. Internet research shows that Austin Texas currently has 441 competing companies, with this many competing companies it can create a number of human resources issues. Such items can consist of high turnover due to low wages and the tightening of the US job market in current years. Internet research shows that chauffeurs in the Austin Texas area are being compensated average annually $23,940.00 and also employees an estimated 12,000 people ("Bureau Of Statistics ", 2015). With wanting to hire up to 25 employees within the first year of business, the compensation and benefits plan can be a smaller more relaxed plan to help all, the business, employees, and Mr. Stonefield.
Recommended Compensation Structure
Given the tightening labor market, the recommended compensation for Landslide Limousines is a traditional job-based compensation model. This model includes up-to-date job descriptions for each position that the company offers. Job descriptions are an important tool for designing a pay system so that each characteristic can be defined and weighted with compensable factors (Cassio, 2013). The compensation model should also include job evaluations. This will help to evaluate and rank jobs in terms of overall performance to the company and hierarchy. This will help set in place the organizational structure and pay differences between positions. Establishing external surveys to identify pay rates in relevant job markets will keep the organization competitive with the employees. Using this information the organization can assign dollar values to each position in the hierarchy.
Laws and Compensation In order for his business to succeed, Bradley is going to need to familiarize himself with the laws that will govern the payment, benefits, and compensation of his employees. The two Texas laws that will affect his business are the Texas Payday Law and the Texas Minimum Wage Law according to the Texas Workforce Commission (Texas Workforce Commission, 2011). The Texas Minimum Wage Law adopted the Federal minimum wage rate of $7.25/hour and required an earnings statement be provided for each employee. The Texas Payday Law states that all persons who perform a service for compensation are considered employees, except for close relatives and independent contractors. According to the law, anything extra owed to the employee such as commissions, bonuses, and certain fringe benefits must be in a written agreement between the employee and employer.
If the employee is terminated, the law