COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
STRATEGY MASTERCLASS
- August 25 - 28, 2025
- Hotel Sofitel, Dubai - UAE
Event Highlights
- Expert Masterclass . Exclusive Resources . Live Q&A Session
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
MASTERCLASS INTRODUCTION:
Compensation & Benefits is a critical pillar of strategic HR— and one of the most technical. This intensive masterclass delivers a clear, practical understanding of C&B fundamentals and advanced practices. Covering everything from salary structures to incentive design, it helps you align rewards with performance, retention, and business outcomes. Complex topics are made simple through hands-on exercises, real-world examples, and structured frameworks.
COURSE METHODOLOGY:
This course is immersive, conversational, and application-focused. While key concepts are introduced to build a solid foundation, the emphasis is on practical tools, real-life case studies, and interactive learning.
Method Include:
- Guided discussions and Q&A
- Individual and group exercises
- Reflective practice and collaborative work
- Case studies and optional role plays
Participants are encouraged to share real scenarios, making
the experience highly relevant, personalized, and impactful.
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WHAT YOU’LL GAIN:
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Design and implement a strategic Total Rewards framework that aligns with organizational goals
- Build and manage competitive salary structures based on market data and job evaluations
- Align compensation with performance management and
pay-for-performance systems - Develop and evaluate incentive plans that drive business
results - Create impactful recognition and retention schemes that
foster engagement and reduce turnover
You’ll walk away with the tools, methodologies, and confidence to elevate your organization’s Compensation & Benefits strategy.
Ms. Sandrine Bardot
- Total Rewards Expert
- C&B Trainer, Speaker, Blogger & Consultant
- CEO & Founder
- Compensation Insider & The Bardot Group
Sandrine Bardot is a globally know authority in Compensation & Benefits with over 30 years of international experience. Her career spans Europe, the Middle East, Africa,and Asia, where she has led, designed, and implemented high-impact Total Rewards strategies in a wide range of industries including technology, oil & gas, finance, retail, manufacturing, and public sector organizations.
She has held senior global and regional C&B leadership roles in iconic companies such as Philips, Apple, and Microsoft, and played a key role in shaping the Performance and Reward frameworks of major UAE-based groups like Majid Al Futtaim and Mubadala. Her work has consistently focused on aligning compensation practices with business goals, improving organizational performance, and enhancing employee experience.
As the Founder and CEO of both The Bardot Group and Compensation Insider, Sandrine provides strategic consulting, board-level advisory, and customized training in Compensation & Benefits across the GCC, Asia, and Africa.
A passionate educator, Sandrine is also a faculty member for prestigious global learning platforms like World at Work and AIHR, and formerly contributed to CIPD Middle East. Through her sought-after Compensation Insider blog, she shares valuable insights, practical frameworks, and real-
world advice with thousands of HR professionals worldwide.
Her ability to translate complex C&B topics into clear, actionable strategies has made her one of the most trusted voices in the field. Whether through consulting, coaching, or training, Sandrine empowers HR leaders to master the technical and strategic dimensions of Compensation & Benefits and become true drivers of business impact
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
This course is ideal for professionals looking to enhance their expertise in Compensation & Benefits strategy, including:
- Senior HR Leaders – Heads of HR, Reward, Total Rewards, and senior HRBPs.
- C-suite Executives – CHROs, CFOs, and business leaders shaping talent strategies.
- Compensation & Benefits Specialists – Professionals managing pay structures, incentives, and retention programs.
- HR Business Partners – Advisors looking to influence reward decisions and support line managers.
- Talent & Performance Leaders – Managers integrating rewards with talent strategies.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Session A : Strategic Foundations of Compensation & Benefits
Includes:
- Defining Total Rewards:
Understanding pay philosophy, the reward mix, and steps to designing a compensation structure. - From Job Descriptions to Grade Structures:
Writing impactful job descriptions, job architecture, evaluation methods (Hay, Mercer, etc.), and designing salary structures. - Setting Pay:
Salary surveys, benchmarking, managing salary ranges, understanding market positioning, and percentile calculations.
Session B: Performance & Talent Acquisition Integration
Includes:
- C&B and Hiring:
Using surveys for recruitment, setting packages, managing out-of-range offers, referral schemes, and salary negotiations. - Performance Management – Today & Tomorrow:
Pay-for-performance practices in the GCC, trends like agile performance management, bias reduction, and the role of line managers.
Session C: Internal Compensation Management
Includes:
- Managing Base Pay:
Criteria and processes for salary increases, promotions, setting budgets, merit matrices, and common allowance trends (housing, education).
Session D: Incentives, Retention & Engagement
Includes:
- Incentives:
Purpose of variable pay, incentive types, payout curves, linking incentives to strategy, and sales plans. - Retention, Recognition & Engagement:
Engagement indicators, designing retention schemes, motivation factors, and recognition programs (spot awards, peer-to-peer).
Defining Total Rewards :
You will understand the “big picture” of defining your pay philosophy,
and why it is a cornerstone of all other C&B activities.
- How it all fits together
- The reward mix
- Steps to designing a new compensation structure
From Job Descriptions to Defining a Grade Structure :
You will learn how to write impactful job descriptions,. You will discuss different
methods of performing job evaluations and how to decide on which grading
structure is best for your organisation.
Job descriptions
- Job architecture
- Different formats for job descriptions
- Writing impactful JDs
- Communicating role expectations to employes
Job evaluations
- Why evaluate jobs ?
- Overview of the main job evaluation methods
- Typical triggers for large grading projects
- Overview of different job evaluation methods
(Hay, Mercer iPE, Willis Towers Watson, MEIR, Paterson…) - Designing your own job evaluation system
- Examples of end result from different job evaluation approaches
- All jobs are evaluated, now what ?
Defining pay
- Trade-offs when designing salary ranges
- Narrow banding
- Broad banding
- An alternative
Setting Pay :
You will learn why you should not have more than 3 salary ranges, and
you will uncover how to flawlessly participate to salary surveys. You will
also master the basics of mathematics for managing midpoints, and
understand which elements to look at when updating your salary ranges.
Participating in salary benchmarking
- Why participate in surveys
- What to benchmark
- Preparing the survey file
- Initial interpretation of the survey results
Updating your salary range
- What do I need to know for an up-to-date salary structure?
- Target position to market
- The world of percentiles
- Extrapolating percentiles from market data
- Defining “the market”
- Defining your peer group
- Why we need to age data
- Using survey results – special case
C&B and Hiring
This section covers how the Compensation function interacts and supports Talent Acquisition in many different ways.
- Using surveys for recruitment and bidding
- Setting packages at the current market value
- What if a candidate is paid above the maximum of the salary range?
- Leveraging employee referral schemes
- Package negotiation
Performance Managemen, Today and Tomorrow :
This section describes current practices in pay for performance as well as innovative trends and ways to reduce bias in performance evaluations
- Performance Management and Pay for Performance : common practice in the GCC
- Assess the effectiveness of your PM system
Best practices
- Ratings
- Distribution curve
- Calibration
- Performance Improvement Plans
New trends:
- Agile/continuous performance management
- Reducing bias thanks to neuroscience,
- Tips for implementing pay-for-performance.
- The role of line managers
Managing Base Pay : Salary Reviews, Promotions and Allowances
We will discuss which criteria to use for awarding salary increases and promotions, in which order to apply the increases, how to set your budget, and the principles behind merit matrices for individual salary increase recommendations. Promotions and managing allowances will also be covered
Salary increases:
- Employee position in the salary range
- Your pay philosophy : how does an employee move through the range ?
- Different types of merit increases
- Preparing the salary increases
- The order of salary increases
- Setting the budget
Merit matrices
- Example of a typical merit matrix
- Principles in managing merit matrices
Exercise : Out of cycle merit increase
Promotions:
- Promotions numbers – background
- Individual criteria for eligibility to promotion
- Typical promotion increases in the GCC
Allowances
- Trends in accommodation
- Trends in education
- Other trends
Incentives:
This module covers some principles around incentive design, and discusses payout curves in detail. You will be able to understand the mechanics of the scheme in your organisation, so that you can perform payout calculations accurately.
Background on incentives
- What is the purpose of variable pay ?
- Bonuses vs incentives
- Different types of incentives – spotlight on profit-sharing, gainsharing, spot awards and milestone awards
- Eligibility to various incentives
- Tips for calculating bonuses
Incentive plan design
- Linking incentive design to company strategy
- 5 questions to design an incentive plan
- Fixed/variable pay ratio
- Considerations on performance measures
- Payout curve
- Design ownership
- Overview of various sales incentive plans
Retention, Recognition and Engagement:
Discover metrics that indicate a potential decrease in employee engagement, watch recommendations from world-famous Dan Pink, and learn about designing
recognition schemes.
Employee engagement :
- Engagement and business results
- 3 measures for sustainable engagement
- Factors influencing employee engagement
- Hard metrics and soft metrics
- Autonomy, mastery and purpose
- Linking engagement to rewards
Employee retention:
- Dispelling myths about retention schemes
- Designing your retention scheme
- In Real Life : a customer service retention scheme
Recognition schemes
- The value of recognition programs
- Combining 2 different approaches to recognition
- Special recognition : loyalty, Nationals, spot awards
- Peer-to-peer recognition
Have questions or want to work together?
Feel free to reach out! I’m here to help and would love to hear from you.
Feel Free To Ask Us Anything
Our address
Suite # 401, Al Mustafa Centre, Block 13-B Gulshan-e-Iqbal – 75300, Karachi
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