Compensation Work Bench :

An Overview

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Compensation Work Bench (CWB) : An Overview

Introduction Compensation Work Bench (CWB) is a part of Oracle Advanced Benefits within Oracle

E-Business (EBS) Suite which is a tool to manage salary, stock and bonus administration

in the company.

CWB Highlights CWB gets data directly from the core HRMS and hence eliminates any potential

errors if using spreadsheets for the same purpose

Ease of availability of historical information

It is is a self-service tool that comes up with user-friendly GUI for people to use

The tool is easily configurable and flexible to meet the compensation strategy

and other business needs of a company

It considerably reduces the lead time to do focal and bonus review cycles

improving productivity and efficiency

CWB is a part of Oracle Advanced Benefits (OAB) and hence does not need any

separate licensing if one has OAB purchased

Tasks in CWB Typically, there are five tasks performed in CWB :

Set Budgets : This is the task wherein the highest level manager in the company

(CEO) sets budgets to his/her direct reports and the process continues all the

way down to the second line managers. The first line managers would not have

any managers reporting to them to whom they can allocate budgets and so this

process stops at second line managers.

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Compensation Work Bench (CWB) : An Overview

Allocate Compensation : The manager would then go into this task to give the

required merit/promotion increase or number of stocks or the bonus dollars.

During implementation, it is also possible to create system generated columns

which would show the recommended increase as a guideline to the manager in

giving the raise. This guideline metrics can be derived from various criteria like

length of service, performance ratings, job levels, previous year raise etc.

This page will also have links for historical information, job information,

performance through years etc., so that a manager can make meaningful

decisions based on these facts available at hand.

Manage Approvals : This is for second level manager and above to review what

is submitted by the managers below them in hierarchy and approve.

Review and Submit : This step would give ability to the manager to review the

allocations he/she made and submit it for higher level managers for their

approval.

Employee Statements : After the whole process is done, managers would have

ability to print employee statements and hand it over to their employees. The

statements can be customized in their look and feel and the text they display.

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Compensation Work Bench (CWB) : An Overview

Opening and closing the workbench Since the merit, stock or bonus cycles are done during specific times in any company

and are not something done on a daily basis, its important that some administrative

functions are done as part of making CWB available for use. One of them is opening up

the workbench wherein managers would then go and fill in budgets and allocate

compensation. When once all tasks are done and employee statements are printed, its

important to close the CWB cycle so that no further inputs can be made.

Its also possible to open all three merit, bonus and stock cycles at the same time. In that

case, the managers would see three sets of the five tasks discussed above – one for each

of merit, bonus and stock administration.

Other features Its possible to grey out enterable fields for some employees if they are ineligible

for any of the merit/bonus/stock plans due to their short stay in the company

etc

CWB offers opportunity for managers to review the merit proposals in either

USD or in the currency that the employees get paid. Currency conversion rates

can also be used to compare the data in multiple currencies.

The tool has options to add training documents or any other important links on

the side to enable managers make use of it during the cycle

The tool also has lots of analytics built into it to help managers understand how

their inputs are getting reflected against the budget allocated etc.

Overall CWB is a comprehensive, easy-to-use and flexible tool for salary, bonus and

stock administration.