Published April 2026
“Who do you want to be when you grow-up?” Nobody ever replied “a Compensation Manager”. Pursuing the career of becoming a Compensation Manager tends to lose against childhood dreams such as being “a photographer” or “stuntman”. Most people aren’t even aware that compensation needs managing. That is, until e.g., lawyers are engaged about topics such as Equal Pay claims or the finance department is tasked to calculate the merit increase budget.
As such, many people tend to drift into the Compensation Manager role joining a diverse community of professionals with backgrounds in e.g., economics, marketing, or analytics. It is a special crowd that seems distinct to other HR-professions. After all, Reward Management requires a wide array of skills to cover its constituents.
The field of Compensation Management grew-up to encompass an expansive area of responsibilities. Nowadays, it covers more than just job architecture, benchmarks, and incentive designs. It goes beyond into corporate governance preparing for shareholders’ votes on executive compensation and the remuneration report. This entails engagements addressing investors’ demands and anticipating proxy voting firms’ vote recommendations. Moreover, reporting requirements also mandate the disclosure of e.g., the CEO-to-worker ratio or Gender Pay Gaps. Accordingly, people analytics is often added to the compensation management realm leveraging synergies in data availability and the team’s skills. Using people analytics allows for sophisticated pay assessments that can be used for stakeholder engagement. Stakeholders are increasingly interested in e.g., fair pay (such as the living wage) and Equal Pay (which reflects the principle of “equal pay for equal work”). Reward professionals in the financial services sector are keenly aware of regulator’s interest in the compensation system. Regulatory law has imposed a myriad of demands e.g., deferrals on variable compensation and the requirement to use share-linked instruments. Regulations vary across jurisdictions as does employees’ tax treatment, social security implications, and cost of living when managing international assignments. Taken together, these topics must be put into a holistic strategic compensation framework based on a profound understanding of how best to support the business ambitions.
It takes an oddball set of skills to be successful in Reward Management. As such, the role may not be the job of a childhood-dream, but with its unusual remit, it makes for a rewarding career (pun intended).
(This is article 3 of 3 in the series answering “what is compensation management” where I draw-up a reply that goes beyond schoolbook-responses to reflect the truly expansive nature of a Compensation Manager’s job.)
You can find Part 1 here.
You can find Part 2 here.