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Total rewards strategy and optimization

Think holistically about employee well-being

Rewards have moved beyond a paycheck, retirement and insurance. Today’s workers also expect rewards that prioritize their overall well-being, enable professional growth and recognize performance. Deloitte’s Rewards and Well-being practice can help you define, deliver, continuously refine and optimize the ideal workforce experience.

Workers’ needs and expectations have shifted

Have your total rewards and well-being strategies kept pace?

Total rewards is the sum of an employee’s compensation, benefits and rewards received from an employer. These offerings have taken on new importance as employees embrace more flexible ways of working and expect an employment experience that matches their personal and professional priorities and promotes well-being. How well have your total rewards strategy and well-being strategy evolved for today’s hybrid workforce—and whatever tomorrow may bring? Here are some signs they may need updating:

  • Talent attraction/retention issues: The workforce has increasing agency. Unexpected attraction or retention issues could indicate your workforce value proposition isn’t in sync with the rewards, recognition and well-being needs of your current or desired workers or their families.
  • Mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity: As organizations grow or evolve through acquisitions or divestitures, a modern, flexible approach to rewards, recognition and well-being that is informed and influenced by workforce preferences can be the difference between success and mediocrity.
  • Cost management concerns: Responding to the “Great Resignation,” organizations committed significant financial resources to retaining talent, but that strategy is not sustainable in the future, especially during periods of financial disruption. The good news: there are other levers you can pull in order to optimize your rewards, recognition and well-being spend.
  • Inefficient or noncompliant rewards operations: Boards and C-suite leaders are under immense pressure to address increasingly apparent workforce risks and prepare to comply with a new SEC disclosure framework.
  • Outdated job architecture: The workforce of the future is changing and the infrastructure or hierarchy of jobs within your organization needs to change as well. This includes how you will embed well-being into the work itself in order to support the organization you want to become.

Focus areas for a modern total rewards leader​

Services to move from strategy to reality

Our broad range of services gives you guidance and support to design, enable and activate your total rewards and well-being strategies. With total rewards optimization, you can stay agile and continue to meet your workforce’s evolving needs with the right people, tools and practices.

Evolving your total rewards strategy

Shift from rewards to workforce value

Part of navigating the complexities of work, the workforce and the workplace of the future is reevaluating your organization’s workforce value proposition for how to best support, reward and recognize your workers. Our holistic, workforce-centric approach, informed by organizational data and technology, helps you do just that. 

We work with you to design and implement a total rewards strategy based on flexible, equitable plans and programs that become naturally embedded in your workers’ everyday experience.

Building on this foundation, we can help you extend and accelerate your strategy beyond rewards, tying into other critical workforce experiences. Culture, well-being, recognition, and (for high-performing organizations) talent and performance management processes can all become part of a holistic workforce value proposition that distinguishes your organization as an employer of choice.

The Deloitte difference

Broad experience. Deep insight.


Our work with organizations around the world and in virtually every industry, as well as our more than decade-long ongoing research into global human capital trends, means we can provide you with deep insight into creating and optimizing a total rewards strategy and offerings that workers value and that add value to your business.

Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends: New fundamentals for a boundaryless world

The boundaries that were once assumed to be the natural order of things are falling away as disruption and discontinuity challenge traditional models and assumptions about work. Organizations and workers must traverse this new landscape together, calling on a new set of fundamentals to navigate the boundaryless world.

Explore more than 10 years of research and trends

Breaking from tradition with skills-based rewards: Reshaping your organization using a skills-based rewards structure

Once introduced, skills-based organizations will provide workers with increased mobility, greater incentives for developing the right skills at the right time, and greater ability to influence their own career paths as they take on new roles within their preferred areas of interest.

The future of total rewards

To balance the ever-evolving needs of the business with needs of the workforce, leaders must begin thinking beyond just their total rewards programs, and instead, consider how the total rewards experience fits into the overall workforce value proposition.

Insights2ActionTM

With the nature of work, the workplace, and the workforce rapidly changing, high-performing organizations are pivoting to a more strategic view of rewards—looking beyond a paycheck and basic benefits to offer a compelling rewards and wellbeing program that considers the totality of the relationships organizations need to create with their workforce.

Deloitte's Reward, Employment Tax, Equity and Executive Compensation Services

Navigate complex compensation and tax reporting while enhancing employee experience and transparency and strengthen executive compensation packages to adapt to the latest competitive market trends and expectations from regulators and investors.

Capital H blog

Your source for ongoing real-world insights from Deloitte Human Capital Consulting professionals at the forefront of putting humans at the center of work.

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Dbriefs webcasts for HR executives

Navigate what’s next in work, workforce, and workplace trends and human capital topics through webinars presented by Deloitte specialists.

Deloitte in the news

Explore headline issues and trends affecting organizations and the world of work informed by insights from Deloitte Human Capital leaders.

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