Compensation and benefits are rapidly changing towards non-material trends. The changing workforce attitude requires HR management groups to revisit the existing compensation and work environment provided by the company. In the future, enterprises will increase the incentive content of non-material returns in total rewards, including career development, immediate feedback on performance and job intelligence and automation; enterprises will re-emphasize employees' physical and mental health and security management through personalized material returns. Employee performance, work experience and its total rewards needs are closely linked.

2020 GLOBAL COMPENSATION & BENEFITS TRENDS, the heavyweight report, has proposed for the first time on the【MIXED COMPENSATION STRUCTURE】,【PULSE SHAPED’S COMPENSATION MECHANISM】,【THE 3 LAWS OF INCENTIVES】,【FIVE LAWS OF FEEDBACK】, the workplace-IoT relevant models【SECOND FEEDBACK LOOP】and other frontier insights including【FRAME ANALYTICS OF INTRINSIC MOTIVATION】,【THREE LEVELS OF EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE】, 【TOTAL EXPERIENCE MODAL】, 【THEORY OF QUITY COMPENSATION】,【THE CONVECTION BETWEEN COMPENSATION & BENEFITS AND EMPLOYER BRAND】and so on. All the models aim to take the lead in exploring the large-scale deep changes that compensation and benefits management is undergoing in HR management.

In the new era, the rapidly changing external environment requires employees to maintain a high level of creativity. The creative type of work, as the mainstream-to-be in the future workplace, will be characterized by unpredictable output and increasing need for people’s creativity and exploration ability. The stimulation of this ability depends on the effective mechanism setup of compensation, welfare and incentive within the organization. 2020 GLOBAL COMPENSATION & BENEFITS TRENDS has provided strategic advice and insights on the following 10 trends in the area of HR compensation and benefits:

• Diversification of Work and Multi-Polarization of Compensation Levels: the traditional employment structure will be supplemented by a more flexible and adaptable model, and the salary, work schedules and contract types will be more diversified. The diversification of future work will lead to multi-polarization of compensation levels.

• Mixed Compensation Structure with Real-Time Payroll: Mixed working mode makes individual income diversified, and mixed and diversified employment mode makes compensation structure more complicated. The future compensation cycle is no longer limited to the monthly, but to increase the real-time pay, quarterly pay, pay per piece, and other ways of payment.

• From Ladder Shaped to Pulse Shaped’s Compensation Mechanism: The traditional stepwise salary adjustment is suitable for the relatively stable business environment in the industrial age, while the pulsed salary adjustment is suitable for the unstable, uncertain, complex and fuzzy business environment in the digital age.

• Digital Recognition and Incentives: The 3 laws of incentives: 1. Value is defined by the receiver more than the giver. 2. Self-worth is recognized by others. 3. Incentives and recognition enable employees to explore their potential.

• Performance Salary and Workplace-IoT: Five laws of feedback:1. Without feedback, people tend to give up. 2. The intensity of the feedback determines the intensity of people's subsequent behavior.  3. People decide what to do next (positive, negative, status quo) based on the type of feedback. 4. Constant environmental feedback can build behavior habits by influencing motivation. 5. he more delayed the feedback, the lower the utility.

• From External Incentives to Self-Motivation: Internal motivation comes from freedom and not oppression, surprise rewards, random rewards setting clear objectives maximizing happiness of success continuous challenge setting necessary risks and failures.

• From Regular Feedback to Instant Rewards: Feedback is no longer limited to long cycles of verbal recognition and high cost material rewards, but may be short cycles of low-cost and efficient use of virtual medals, digital thumb up behavior.

• From Total Rewards to Full Experience: Drawing an employee journey and experience map can help companies notice key points in employee experience and ensure that employee values have an effect on employee experience.

• From Internal Equality to Internal Equity: Employees' feeling of inequality often comes from the limitations of their access to information and misconception of self, so feedback is critical.

• Increased Convection Between Compensation and Benefits and Employer Brands: The convective effects of positive and negative correlations between employer branding and compensation and benefits have led to an increasingly complex relationship between compensation systems and employer brands.

2020 GLOBAL COMPENSATION & BENEFITS TRENDS has not only provided an interpretation of the above 10 major trends on compensation and benefits, but also proposed the “Three Laws of Incentives” and “Five Laws of Feedback” based on in-depth interviews and massive theoretical information researched, to offer a new vision and dimensions for the area of compensation and benefits.

Throughout the report, the research teams hope to help global HR managers and HR service entrepreneurs to better understand the frontiers and major trends in compensation and benefits, returns and incentives, and to get well prepared accordingly. Coping measures to help companies build a globally competitive total rewards and incentive system in an increasingly complex and volatile market environment.