i4cp Total Rewards Leader Board In-Person Meeting at Delta Air Lines in Atlanta, GA - Total Rewards, Clearly Delivered
Even the best Total Rewards programs fall flat without clear, compelling communication. At our Fall in-person meeting at Delta Air Lines HQ in Atlanta, we explored how leading organizations are rethinking benefits messaging to drive understanding, engagement, and adoption—especially across distributed workforces.
Key topics included:
- Communication strategies that actually boost benefit utilization
- Tailoring rewards messaging to diverse audiences and life stages
- Measuring communication effectiveness and evolving the approach
Hot Topics & Takeaways:
We kicked off the meeting with a brief overview of total rewards trends pulled from the latest Total Rewards Pulse Survey.
A summary of the survey results can be found here .
Major trends from the survey included:
-
A reaction to rising healthcare costs
-
How TR leaders are utilizing AI
-
The future of compensation and skills
Additional Topics of Discussion:
H-1B Visas + Mobility
-
The primary sentiment is that the latest news creates chaos with little clear guidance at this point in time. There are still a lot of unknowns. It seems to target a lot of tech companies, but it also appears in some ways they will possibly be less affected. Higher skilled workers will be weighted more in the lottery system for visas.
-
Some leaders aren’t worried because most of their employees are conversions, meaning they were brought into the country by another employer.
-
Several leaders shared that they use Fragoman (global leader in immigration services) for immigration services/counseling for their employees.
-
A possible strategy some discussed is starting employees in other locations outside of the U.S. (This is not guidance, simply a strategy some are considering).
-
One company is considering sending people back home if they’re on H-1B visas and having them serve as sort of cultural ambassadors in new locations of business.
-
Key Questions:
-
What’s next? What can we realistically anticipate?
-
Mobility/Immigration falls under TR or Talent at most organizations, but often legal is more involved and up to date than the mobility team. How do TR leaders stay more in the know?
-
Is anyone working with their ERGs to ease some of the fears among employees? Some leaders are using ERGs to surface questions to answer. One organization set up a hotline call center to answer questions.
-
Linking Skills to Compensation
-
Some companies lend themselves more to adding skills into the compensation equation than others. It very much depends on the industry. A pharmaceutical company, for example, is going to have an easier job of tying skills to pay than a retail organization.
-
The decided best practice among members is for skills to be “related but not directly correlated.”
-
The board spent time discussing skills and pay bands. Admittedly, there is a ceiling to every job, no matter how skilled an employee might be. Quote of note: “I wouldn’t pay Michelangelo to paint my bathroom ceiling.” Employers should instead clearly articulate options for upskilling and mobility if employees want to earn more.
Executive Compensation
-
Members discussed what do high-performing organizations do to set executive comp targets for Short Term Incentive Plans (STIPs)?
-
Big debate on what companies tell the Street. Is it a range? Are they overpaying just for meeting goals?
-
One leader shared that they do not have financial metrics in their plan. They use metrics related to drug development and launch.
-
Other key questions:
-
What percentage of an organization does Exec Comp apply to? i.e. top 600 leaders at an organization of over 100,000 employees.
-
Are there vehicles where Exec Comp is aligned for all employees? (i.e. profit sharing) If so, what?
-
Sessions of Note:
The Evolution of Legislative Policy-Making
Jim Klein, Senior Advisor, American Benefits Council
Jim Klein of the American Benefits Council gave board member an overview of the evolving policy landscape which impacts everyone, and offered a deep dive into health policy moving forward.
Delta Air Lines Total Rewards Portal & Life at Work Portal
Kathryn Neidhardt, Total Rewards, Delta Air Lines
Jennifer Shay, Employee & Alumni Services, Delta Air Lines
-
Delta Airlines launched a new total rewards portal for employees in January 2025. The portal is viewed as a digital front door and one-stop-shop for all benefits programs. The ‘Life At Work’ portal was purchased through third-party vendor Conduent.
-
Employees at the manager level and below were provided access to their total rewards statement. The company chose not to enable the platform for executives as their compensation is more complex and managed with Fidelity.
-
The company drives traffic to the total rewards portal via employee communications, such as their weekly email blast. They utilize QR codes as well.
-
The platform has unexpectedly become really useful for providing transparency to employees and for navigating counter offers.
Delta Air Lines Market-Based Pay Journey & Education
Charles White, Global Compensation, Delta Air Lines
Jonelle Brown, Executive Compensation, Delta Air Lines
-
Delta Airline’s job architecture needed to be rebuilt to develop job families and sub-families. Prior to the shift to market-based pay, Delta had a broad-range pay plan with little differentiation between levels.
-
An appointed team looked at executive pay data, external surveys, and market data to establish market-based pay.
-
Leaders had to educate managers and employees that jobs do not equal positions. The company made an intentional effort to map jobs, not positions.
-
People leaders were equipped with the necessary information to communicate the change, and Delta’s talent hub outlines the skills employees need to progress and move groups.
-
The team also deployed a video library to help employees understand their pay. Short and simple videos were included about base pay and compensation philosophy.
log in
