Book excerpt: In Compensation and Benefit Design, Bashker D. Biswas shows exactly how to bring financial rigor to crucial "people" decisions associated with compensation and benefit program development. This comprehensive book begins by introducing a valuable Human Resource Life Cycle Model for considering compensation and benefit programs. Biswas thoroughly addresses the acquisition component of compensation, as well as issues related to general compensation, equity compensation, and pension accounting. He assesses the full financial impact of executive compensation programs and employee benefit plans, and discusses the unique issues associated with international HR systems and programs. This book contains a full chapter on HR key indicator reporting, and concludes with detailed coverage of trends in human resource accounting, and the deepening linkages between financial and HR planning. Replete with both full and "mini" case examples throughout, this book will be valuable to a wide spectrum of HR and financial professionals, with titles including compensation and benefits analysts, managers, directors, and consultants; HR specialists, accounting specialists, financial analysts, total rewards directors, controller, finance director, benefits actuaries, executive compensation consultants, corporate regulators, and labor attorneys. It also contains chapter-ending exercises and problems for use by students in HR and finance programs.