Compensation Cafe

Pay for Supervisors

The well-established principle that supervisors should praise in public but criticize in private can derail a compensation system.  An article caught my eye recently on how slackers pull down the group because the crew rarely sees the corrective discipline privately applied.  It illustrates that what keeps people productive is effective communication of the appropriate feedback that drives behavior.  That made sense, but the recommended solution sucked.

Two thoughts came to mind:  (1) just as compensation is communication, isn’t communication also compensation? and (2) why are supervisors paid if not to keep the entire staff productive?  This article will focus on the second question, because the first deserves a complete post of its own.

If a boss follows the accepted rules and keeps corrective interventions private and confidential, that apparent silence bespeaks indifference to the workgroup who do not see any improvement steps, remedial actions, reprimands, punishments or open displays of negative consequences to the slacker.  One consultant prescribes intervention by the peer workers with the offender.  Rather than getting pissed off and demotivated yourself, he suggests, you should take ownership of the issue (because you are most affected by it and therefore more responsible than the boss!) and handle it yourself.  If the boss doesn’t act, some claim the peer co-workers should step up and chivvy the culprit.

Whose responsibility is it, to maintain a productive workforce?  Nowadays, it is true, bosses may supervise remotely, having little proximate physical contact with the team and therefore frequently unaware of slackers who goof off.  Even if out of sight, however, bosses are paid and supposedly trained to handle exactly these issues.  It is their monkey. 

Should co-workers be expected to cover for the supervisor, taking up the slack created by ineffective management to “supervise from below”?  I think not.  While social pressure from peers can be wonderfully effective, most workgroups are not elite teams of highly self-actualized experts who require little guidance.  An immediate supervisor is usually PAID to manage the performance of subordinates.  The boss may be called lead person, crew chief, foreman or forewoman, supervisor, manager, director, VP… or any title under the sun, but this role of people-monitor is the sole reason they receive a supervisory title and get higher income.  Leaders don’t neglect the well-being of their followers, because that is a repudiation of their pay grade. 

Remember that supervisors frequently have a more difficult task than mere managers.  Many people get the fancy title of manager (higher rank, pay, status, etc.) while remaining a sole individual performer, handling a project personally or administering a functional area.  Supervisors oversee people.  Managers may have no subordinates reporting directly to them, but all supervisors are responsible for the output of workers who report directly to them.  Handling people is actually a far more complex challenge than dealing with materials, administering plans, generating ideas and doing things that do not require exercising authority over people.  Instead of doing things yourself, the supervisor is supposed to delegate tasks and leverage the application of talent through others.  That is often much harder than handling issues personally as an individual contributor.

Since supervisors are already rewarded for filling that role of monitor and guide, they should be charged with the duty of fulfilling that responsibility.  It seems wrong, improper and unfair to expect underlings to enforce discipline and to maintain the productive work environment when a supervisor is neglecting their duty.  Any boss incapable or unwilling to perform that authoritative human interaction role should be demoted to a coordinator position where they can deal with data and things and not face supervisory challenges. 

Or am I wrong, again?

E. James (Jim) Brennan is Senior Associate of ERI Economic Research Institute, the premier publisher of interactive pay and living-cost surveys. Semi-retired after over 40 years in HR corporate and consulting roles throughout the U.S. and Canada, he’s pretty much been there done that (articles, books, speeches, seminars, radio/TV, advisory posts, in-trial expert witness stuff, etc.), and will express his opinion on almost anything.

Image courtesy of cafepress.com

The Stuff of Legends!

I've been getting to know a few new clients recently. They've been introducing me to their culture and I've been helping them learn a bit from their demographics.  In writing a report for one client yesterday, I was repeating back to them a factoid they gave me. It went something like, "70% to 80% of new employees make it through the first year and tend to stay." I stopped typing.

It is exciting, but is it true? Do they have the data for it?

Every company has legends. Stories that they use to define the company as a hero. You have them in your company. You have them in HR. The thing is that, like all legends, things have been polished up a bit to build in drama. Or they may have been true once but over time the story has become more reassuring than accurate.

Or one day a few people wished upon a star.

Some legends are powerfully tied to the company's sense of self and should be negotiated carefully. Odds are Marissa Mayer thought she was tackling a legend when she limited telecommuting at Yahoo! She still thinks it was the right thing for the business.

Let legends automatically guide our decisions and over time our decisions will become dusty. This can be bad for the business, our employees and, frankly, our careers.

If people at your place of business toss around legends, especially if they involve a belief that things are just so, it's a good idea to check them out. ("We target the 75%ile" is a good one, if your market index is hovering around .6. Another is, "We pay for performance" when most employees are surprised by their performance ratings or the size of their incentives.)

Anybody out there have favorite legends to share?

Margaret O'Hanlon is founder and Principal of re:Think Consulting. She'll join Ann Bares and Dan Walter of the Compensation Cafe to speak the unspoken -- Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communication -- in an upcoming book. Margaret brings deep expertise in compensation, career development and communications to the dialog at the Café. Before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal with Towers Watson. Margaret is Deputy Director of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Pacific Plains Region. She earned her M.S. and Ed.S. in Instructional Technology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Creative writing is one of her outside passions, along with Masters Swimming.

Numbers That Lie

Hard numbers can turn out to be really soft and squishy upon closer examination.  Perhaps that is why predictive foresight is rarely fully accurate, even when based on the Best Available Data.  (Note the nifty acronym, proving that even an optimal decision is still doomed to be a BAD decision.)

Reliance on data¹ does increase the certainty people feel when making their mistakes.  Numbers are therefore fondly embraced by most compensation people, because numeric data seem to confirm the accuracy of measurements.  But those very numbers can cause us to stumble because they promise a degree of precision that can be quite misleading, if not downright false. 

Last year, the initial Apple effect greatly skewed exec comp survey results (see The Apple Effect note at the bottom here).  Some frowned at the $376,000,000 in stock options granted to the new Apple CEO Tim Cook (which temporarily ballooned in value to over $600 million shortly thereafter) but little attention was given to his subsequent 99% pay cut this year… perhaps because it’s all RELATIVE.  Funny, how a relative increase gets headline attention but a relative decrease is ignored.  Surveys that did not make allowances for massive swings in isolated observations like that would leave their followers spinning in confusion.

Maybe it all depends on whether you want to find what is normal (the median), discover the most popular (the mode) or simply compute the average.  Those arcane terms are really important in compensation work, because each has a different precise meaning. 

When Bill Gates enters a Starbucks, the average customer in the shop becomes a millionaire.   Averages are directly impacted by outliers, while medians are the middle figure no matter how high the high or how low the low observation.  Conventional society tends to favor AVERAGES even though they are more problematic in statistical terms.  There are all sorts of fancy tricks statisticians use to manipulate the figures they process into “hard numbers.”  They include winsorizing, trimming, hot decking (where a missing value is replaced by a similar but different observation) and others .  Excuse me, but some of those gimmicks strike me as flat-out falsehoods; yet they are enshrined in statistical lore and thus may be applied without your knowing.

Likewise, anyone who finesses you with a claim that pay falls in a bell-shaped curve is yanking your chain (or pulling your thumb) in a big way. Wages are never symmetrical nor do salaries have a normal distribution.  That means some of the standard statistical techniques just don’t fit the world of total rewards where the observations are living, breathing human beings.  Whenever the science of number-crunching is invoked, the art of judgment must be added to assure its proper application.

These are just a few of the common compensation conundrums of lying numbers.  What are your favorites?

¹Mark Twain - There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. 

E. James (Jim) Brennan is Senior Associate of ERI Economic Research Institute, the premier publisher of interactive pay and living-cost surveys. Semi-retired after over 40 years in HR corporate and consulting roles throughout the U.S. and Canada, he’s pretty much been there done that (articles, books, speeches, seminars, radio/TV, advisory posts, in-trial expert witness stuff, etc.), and will express his opinion on almost anything.

Creative Commons image "Bell Curve" by hardeep singh

One Size Does Not Fit All

"If you find a good solution and you become attached to it, the solution may become your next problem." ----- Robert Anthony

I had an "aha" moment recently and then very quickly became embarrassed for what should  have been obvious in the first place.

“One size does not fit all”.  My “aha” was realizing that this doesn’t apply just to HR/compensation --- but everyone in business --- even (drumroll) CEOs!  

JC Penney, the department store chain, recently fired Ron Johnson their CEO of 18 months.   He came from Apple where he created the retail operation that was a smashing success. 

Many people believe his firing was due to poor execution of a strategy that hadn’t been fully thought out.  Some of his innovations were radical, like ending discount sales in a department store known for its markdowns. Perhaps the biggest reason outsiders give for his failure is that he did not listen to customers.

Let’s look a little deeper.  How could such a wildly successful executive from Apple fail so abysmally at JCP?  He obviously had exhibited both great strategy AND great execution at Apple.  Why would his ability to think strategically and execute flawlessly fail him at JCP?

The simple answer:  “One size does not fit all”.

He took a page from Steve Job's playbook:  “Customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”  That sounds arrogant but for Apple it made sense.  Let's look deeper still: “If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you, ‘Better, faster, and cheaper’—that is, better sameness, not revolutionary change. They can describe their desires only in terms of what they are already using."   But big wins happen when you go beyond better sameness.

Ron’s mantra at JCP was --- guess what:  “Customers don’t know what they want”.  Like Jobs he wanted to go with revolutionary change --- not sameness.   But JCP’s products are commodities ---- not revolutionary tech products.  Apple’s business model doesn’t work at JCP.

Here’s an example of someone who wasn’t effective at Apple.   John Sculley took his commodity business model at PepsiCo with him to Apple.  As the new CEO he tried to change Apple from a “techie” company to one similar to PepsiCo ---- buttoned-down, slick and marketing oriented. 

In the end he failed because he began producing mass market machines to compete with IBM and was opposed to licensing Macintosh software. Apple is not in the commodity business like PepsiCo. Its products are about revolutionary change. 

The point to all of this is that CEOs/top management take what has worked for them at Company A and then go to another company, another industry, another culture and try to replicate what was a smashing success at Company A.  And they fail.

Of course we already know this applies to HR and compensation.  Like we haven’t heard it enough?!

I tried to take a team bonus plan for manufacturing assembly lines (line A, B, C, etc.) to another company and it failed.  In the first company it created a healthy competition where assembly lines competed with each other, had fun and celebrated winning.   In the second company it led to divisive competition where teams laughed at each other's failures, took shortcuts in their work leading to defective parts and scrapped material.   Not so successful.  Different culture.

Morale of the story:  Think about what you need to create.  Is it a revolutionary design for a compensation plan that will satisfy a need the company doesn’t even know it has?   Or is an upgraded  “sameness” plan what is really needed?

Put this someplace where you will see it daily. "If you find a good solution and become attached to it, the solution may become your next problem."

P.S.  Aren’t you glad that compensation people like us aren’t the only ones that forget “one size does not fit all”?

Jacque Vilet, President of Vilet International, has over 20 years’ experience in Global Human Resources with major multinationals such as Intel, National Semiconductor and SeagateTechnology. She has managed both local/ in-country national and expatriate programs and has been an expat twice during her career.   Her true love is working with local national issues.  Jacque has the following certifications:  CCP, GPHR, HCS and SWP as well as a B.S. and M.S in
Psychology and an MBA.    She belongs to SHRM, Human Capital Institute and World at Work.   Jacque been a speaker in the U.S., Asia and Europe, and is a regular contributor to various HR and talent management publications. 

Image courtesy:  http://money.cnn.com

How Money Can Buy You Happiness

Today’s post has ramifications on executive compensation, employee base pay theory, and the value of recognition for employee satisfaction and happiness. As you can see, I only like to tackle the large challenges – especially when you recall that compensation philosophies (at any level) are not my area of expertise.

Yet Jim Brennan, a fellow Compensation Café colleague, pointed out this article to the Café klatch, and I couldn’t resist calling “dibs” to write about it. It seems, according to the economists cited in the article, money can buy you happiness. Check out the article for the two graphs showing first, by country, that richer households experience more life satisfaction and second, by households within countries, that more money means happier countries. 

So what does this boil down to? As a country, though US households make more money (and this, in fact, has doubled in size since the 1970s), overall well-being is lower. The article concludes:

“That's not a reason to stop reaching for policies that grow the pie. But it might be a reason to consider better policies to divide it so that more reaches the poorest families.”

I’ll go the extra step the article does not – achieving more of a balance between executive compensation and employee pay. The Swiss passed the strongest “say on pay” legislation yet (though average Swiss employees are also among the highest compensated). The research is a good reminder that pay matters. Regular readers of my posts may be surprised to hear me say that as I usually fall hard on the side of the importance of employee recognition vs. cash bonuses, but don’t misunderstand me. Until base pay is right, fair and appropriate, then it doesn’t matter how much you praise and appreciate employees.

Then just yesterday I saw this article on how money can, indeed, buy happiness. It all depends on how you spend your money with research showing, “We find that people are happier when they spend money on others rather than on themselves.” The author also points out, “Give your time to someone else and you will elevate your level of overall happiness.” These have ramifications directly on employee recognition, which is my area of expertise.

Based on these two articles, I offer three lessons:

1) Compensate people appropriately and fairly, with no single person or band of employees (regardless of rank) earning exponentially more than is relevant to the role or function. In other words, realize that all employees, pulling together, move the ship forward, and should be relevantly compensated for doing so.

2) For many people, their pay cheque is already fully allocated for the daily expenses of life, long before they ever receive it. Rewards and bonuses often offer the most acceptable reason to splurge. When recognizing and rewarding employees for great work or performance, do so in a way that makes it easy for them to use their rewards for others. I’ve heard countless stories of team members redeeming rewards for the benefit of family members (a ballerina outfit for their daughter, a vacation experience for everyone) and not just for something they can individually enjoy.

3) Don’t forget the importance of time. We are all very busy. Our peers as well as those we manage know how busy we are. If we choose to take time from our busy schedules to help them; to answer questions when asked; to pause, notice their good work and recognize them for it, then that can be a tremendous boost to employee happiness in itself.

Can money buy you happiness?

As Globoforce’s Head of Strategic Consulting, Derek Irvine is an internationally minded management professional with over 20 years of experience helping global companies set a higher ambition for global strategic employee recognition, leading workshops, strategy meetings and industry sessions around the  world. His articles on fostering and managing a culture of appreciation  through strategic recognition have been published in Businessweek,  Workspan and HR Management. Derek splits his time between Dublin and  Boston. Follow Derek on Twitter at @DerekIrvine.

Is Co-Creative Analytics the Answer?

There's been a lot of talk about skill shortages at the Cafe lately. Jim Brennan points out that the educational system may be incapable of closing the talent deficit, resulting in a broken link between compensation and education. Ann Bares also discusses the skill shortage, and thinks the answer may lie in cooperation between the recruiting and compensation functions.

Addressing the challenge of the skill shortage in today's economic environment requires a new approach, and I think Ann may be on to something. I'm a big fan of interdisciplinary solutions. The interdisciplinary approach has led to advancements in disease prevention, economic development and global climate change. It has even led to the development of new fields of study like nanotechnology, genomics and bioinformatics. It brings fresh perspectives to old problems, and can lead to astonishing breakthroughs. 

It may be difficult to find a starting point for this inter-departmental cooperation, given that recruiting and compensation are each unfamiliar with the other's vernacular. Data may be the universal translator, and co-creative analytics may be the ideal starting point.

What is co-creative analytics? Here's how the process was described in a recent HBR blog post:

You put together ad-hoc teams that involve not only analysts with relevant domain expertise but also represent skills from other domains, which brings new ways of thinking to old analytical problems. Over a short two or three day period the team will brainstorm around the problem involved and bring together as much data and as many analytical frameworks as they can to both frame up the problem and outline potential solutions or at least pathways to solutions.

As Ann points out, the solution to the skill shortage may lie in a collaborative effort to better understand alternate candidate pools and identify the rewards strategies likely to attract and retain these candidates. It's easy to see how co-creative analytics could facilitate this collaboration.

This same interdisciplinary approach has applications in other areas of the organization. Performance management immediately comes to mind. A co-creative analytics approach could provide better alignment of individual performance goals with the goals of the organization. It's likely that based on different past successes and failures, different departments will approach a given organizational goal in different ways. Sharing those approaches across departmental lines can spark new ways of looking at old problems, pushing the organization forward.

What other kinds of organizational challenges could co-creative analytics address? 

 

Stephanie R. Thomas is an economic and statistical consultant specializing in EEO issues and employment litigation risk management. Since 1999, she's been working with businesses and government agencies providing expert quantitative analysis. Stephanie's articles on examining compensation systems for internal equity have appeared in professional journals and she has appeared on NPR to discuss the gender wage gap. Stephanie is the founder of Thomas Econometrics Inc., the host of The Proactive Employer radio show, and author of the upcoming book Compensating Your Employees Fairly: A Guide to Internal Pay Equity. Follow her on Twitter at @proactivemployr. 

Compensation and Education: A Broken Link?

Has the tie between education and compensation been broken?  Or is a new conflict emerging due to the inability of our educational system to close the talent deficit?  Any break in the chain linking teaching institutions and the KSAs that earn pay is troubling.

While we face a shortage of viable candidates for the critical STEM jobs vital for economic recovery, we have an excess supply of people burdened with immense debt incurred pursuing educations which do not produce suitable employment.  Obviously, college curriculum developers and placement officers are not doing a very good job.  Universities produce graduates in disciplines with no job openings.  Part of the blame rests on the flat economy, because no one can help even the most qualified candidate find employment that doesn’t exist.  The jobs available today are increasingly less middle-class and more of the low-wage type, too, and that further reduces the pool of opportunities for those with university degrees.  Arguments that more education MIGHT change that dilemma rest on the doubtful presumption that students will choose the tougher academic fields where strong skills are badly needed but qualified applicants are in short supply.  Don’t bet on it.

Workforce participation by college grads has been steadily declining, despite the fact they seem to have lower unemployment rates even if they can’t find work in their career field .  Part of that paradox exists because they are frequently willing to take any job despite being “overqualified,” probably because of the immense pressure of student loans that cannot be discharged under new bankruptcy rules.

Student debt is the next U.S. financial crisis, because it already exceeds credit card debt.   An advertorial for an auto equity loan scheme offering temporary cash flow to the typical under/unemployed grad illustrates how bad the situation has become.  Determined people who invest in higher education still have a hard time finding steady income from a suitable job in their field.

In a planned society, this misallocation might not happen because it would not be permitted.  In an openly competitive economic system, you would think that “free market forces” would operate to efficiently match supply with demand.  But this has not happened.  Or maybe it is happening, because pressure is increasing to lower barriers against importing foreigners with the skills our home-grown educational system seems incompetent to produce.  Even professional societies (IEEE) propose immigration reform for STEM talent.

Meanwhile, industry seems to be turning away from an academia seemingly unable to close the skill gaps (talent deficit) in the real world. Everyone agrees that higher education does pay off, over time, despite initial employment issues and similar problems when unemployed; but mismatches between abilities and jobs persist.

The alternatives for solutions are shrinking due to a confluence of forces.  There are fewer people sufficiently educated for the diminishing supply of skilled jobs required for modern employment.  “American workers are overeducated and underskilled,” according to one report.  Large numbers of degreed workers remain underemployed.  At the same time, there are more people literally being encouraged to disappear from the job market and become dependent on new forms of “the dole”  funded by taxes on increasingly stressed and underemployed workers.

How can this mess be fixed?  As the unprecedented number of embedded research links demonstrate, these are deep and serious problems.  What are the most promising possible options to solve them?

E. James (Jim) Brennan is Senior Associate of ERI Economic Research Institute, the premier publisher of interactive pay and living-cost surveys. Semi-retired after over 40 years in HR corporate and consulting roles throughout the U.S. and Canada, he’s pretty much been there done that (articles, books, speeches, seminars, radio/TV, advisory posts, in-trial expert witness stuff, etc.), and will express his opinion on almost anything.

Creative Commons Photo "060713 Tangle" by Dan4th

Skill Shortages: An Opportunity for Recruiting and Compensation to Converge?

Too much focus on job titles is undermining our ability to fill our more challenging job openings, argues Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, in his recent HBR blog post.  By looking only at applicants with specific job titles and overlooking candidates who possess many of the essential skills required and who could take on the responsibilities with a basic investment in on-the-job training, he observes that many employers could be creating their own skill gaps.

In making his point, Ferguson highlights a study conducted recently by Economic Modeling Specialists International.  EMSI completed an analysis of 41 occupations commonly reported as having a skills shortage and then used their own compatibility index (which is based on O*Net competency calculations) to identify and estimate the number of workers who would be willing and able to switch occupations into categories where there skills may be more highly valued than in their current positions.  Where there appears to be an available and adequate pipeline of qualified workers, the EMSI analysis examines wage comparisons as well as other potential "opportunity costs" to understand the degree to which there are incentives for workers to cross occupational lines.

Essentially, EMSI is using this process to highlight situations where organizations could be overlooking "nearly perfect" candidates who possess many of the essential qualifications for a position.  Examples noted include a technology company trying to hire technical writers who might also consider paralegals with exposure to technology subject matter -- or a healthcare organization needing to find medical assistants who might also consider pharmacy technicians as a viable candidate pool.

The EMSI study (of which I have provided only a cursory overview here) raises some interesting questions and possibilities for both recruiting and compensation.  Through its analysis and findings, it prompts employers to consider supporting their recruiting efforts with deeper studies of the available labor markets in order to better understand the possibility and presence of alternate candidate pools -- and to also contemplate the pay and other types of incentives that might be necessary to attract candidates with compatible skills, so that appropriate reward strategies can be explored and put in place.

Seems to me to be an interesting opportunity for recruiting and compensation to put on their respective thinking caps and do a little collaborative problem solving.  You?

Ann Bares is the Founder and Editor of the Compensation Café,  Author of Compensation Force and Managing Partner of Altura Consulting Group LLC, where she provides compensation consulting to a wide range of client organizations.  Ann was recently named President Elect of the Twin Cities Compensation Network (the most awesome local reward network on the planet) and has joined the Advisory Board of the Compensation & Benefits Review, the leading journal for those who design, implement, evaluate and communicate total rewards.  She earned her M.B.A. at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, is a bookhound and aspiring cook in her spare time.  Follow her on Twitter at @annbares. 

Creative Commons image "Converging Footsteps: My Father and Stepmother" by CarbonNYC

What Motivates Creative People?

Until now creativity has been viewed as important but not essential for the survival of a company.  Companies instead have focused on efficiency, productivity, and continuous improvement to lead them to success.

But priorities are dramatically changing. In a Global CEO Survey conducted by IBM, CEOs identified "creativity" as the most important factor for the successful company of the future. 

By “creativity” they mean truly innovative skills found in jobs like architects, data scientists, designers, etc. ---- skills believed to have true strategic value.   Any employee can be creative in his/her work, but the result is not likely to be a “show-stopper” for the company as would the work results of this “creative group”.

Creative employees are different—certainly in the workplace.   Most of them just don’t care about the same things as other employees.  Because they are different, managers have had difficulty knowing how to motivate them.  None of the usual practices that work with other employees seem to work with them.

Creative employees are intrinsically motivated.  They set extraordinarily high standards for themselves.  Research has shown that management can’t get them to work harder or perform better by saying “here’s some more money”.  When extrinsic rewards are being dangled in front of them like carrots on a stick, they feel externally controlled — which becomes a negative for motivation. It’s almost like the more you pay them to do what they love, the less they will love it.

Of course companies need to pay them “enough” to satisfy them. If they don’t, compensation becomes a sore point and distraction.  In addition, they might have a spouse who is less interested in creativity than in paying the mortgage and saving for the kids’ college.

But if management really wants outstanding creative performance, the key is intrinsic motivation– the work itself. 

This is consistent with what I have been told by a couple of my creative friends who have started up companies and now are venture capitalists.  It’s not the money that motivates them (even though they usually make tons of it).  It’s the challenge, the “aha” moments, the discoveries that lead to significant breakthroughs that are the “highs” creative people live for. It’s almost addictive, and it’s absolutely the driver behind their success.

Example:  The wife of one of these friends tells the story of one of her husband’s “aha” moments.   He was in the shower when he had an “aha” moment ---- bolted from the shower and ran naked and dripping wet through the house to his office pumping his arms and singing at the top of his voice.  His path took him through the family room where she was entertaining some friends.   He was totally oblivious --- caught up in the high.

So how can management use the work itself to motivate creative employees?

1)Provide them the right work environment ---- free from bureaucratic excesses, administrative work, unrealistic/changing deadlines, company politics and micromanagement.  
2) Don’t make status check calls and keep track of what’s done/left to do. Spend time with them and really listen to what they have done. Try to understand how they approach and solve problems and what has worked/hasn’t worked.
3) Give them an important problem to solve that the company urgently needs solved. Let them know (if true) that no one else has been able to crack it. This can be a real motivator.

Being told what to do and how to do it with no tolerance of failure, little expectation of recognition, and arbitrary deadlines, can kill motivation. But providing a positive atmosphere where failures are examined constructively, where management really listens and success is recognized in unique ways, can result in spectacular results.

It takes work.  But isn’t it worth it?   CEOs seem to think so. 

What has your experience been in trying to motivate “creatives”?  Any successes you can share?

Jacque Vilet, President of Vilet International, has over 20 years’ experience in Global Human Resources with major multinationals such as Intel, National Semiconductor and Seagate Technology. She has managed both local/ in-country national and expatriate programs and has been an expat twice during her career.   Her true love is working with local national issues.  Jacque has the following certifications:  CCP, GPHR, HCS and SWP as well as a B.S. and M.S in Psychology and an MBA.    She belongs to SHRM, Human Capital Institute and World at Work.   Jacque been a speaker in the U.S., Asia and Europe, and is a regular contributor to various HR and talent management publications. 

Real-Life Experiment in Pay Transparency

Would you trust your co-workers with setting your job responsibilities? Would you let them decide whether to promote or demote you? How about determining your compensation? 

That's exactly what's going to happen on Fox's newest reality TV series, Toxic Office: Does Someone Have To Go?

According to a press release from Fox, the premise is simple: 

Frustrated bosses will hand over the reins of their companies to the employees, offering their respective staffs a chance to make changes in the workplace - even if it means letting co-workers go. 

In one of the previews, employees are gathered in a conference room watching a PowerPoint presentation detailing each employee, right down to salary:

The network says that the show empowers employees to solve their own problems. Reality TV issues aside, could such a setup in real life solve problems? Or would it create more problems? 

We talk a lot about creating transparent pay, but can it ever be a good idea to have complete disclosure, publishing every employee's salary company-wide?  

My concern is that emotion would come into play. Cliques, jealousy, and conflict are a fact of life in the workplace. Decisions might be made in response to a "can you believe he makes that much?" reaction, rather than considering the full picture.

There are numerous factors affecting compensation other than job title and seniority. Differing salary histories in previous employment, negotiations, and salary expectations play a role, as do market conditions, the importance of the position to the company, and individual performance. Could the typical employee get past the initial emotional response and make an objective decision based on a rational assessment of the full picture?

There may be a role for employee input for some types of compensation. For example, IGN Entertainment created a profit-sharing system where employees awarded each other "tokens". The more tokens an employee receives from his co-workers, the larger percentage of the profit she receives (Ann Bares provides the details at Compensation Force). But could this system work for base pay as well as it does for incentive pay?  

We'll have to tune in and see how all of this plays out, but my guess is that going beyond transparency and disclosing salaries to co-workers is likely to create more problems - the kind of table-flipping, name-calling drama that we've come to expect from reality tv - than it solves. 

Stephanie R. Thomas is an economic and statistical consultant specializing in EEO issues and employment litigation risk management. Since 1999, she's been working with businesses and government agencies providing expert quantitative analysis. Stephanie's articles on examining compensation systems for internal equity have appeared in professional journals and she has appeared on NPR to discuss the gender wage gap. Stephanie is the founder of Thomas Econometrics Inc., the host of The Proactive Employer radio show, and author of the upcoming book Compensating Your Employees Fairly: A Guide to Internal Pay Equity. Follow her on Twitter at @proactivemployr.