Compensation Cafe

The List

There's plenty of evidence that recognition is more motivating than cash, once a basic level of fairness and adequacy has been reached.  My Café colleague Derek Irvine has posted extensively on this topic and his numerous blog posts on recognition have been a guiding light in this field.

Recognition works because people are inherently social and competitive.  We care what others think of us and where we stand in the pecking order.  We want others to like us, respect us, and perhaps even be a bit jealous of our perfect seeming digital lives.  We’re wired that way because it helps us form communities and stave off immediate death. 

With that incisive summary of human psychology in mind let’s look at this principle in action.

My husband shared an entertaining conversation he had with a colleague last week about the challenges of raising five children.  To keep their impressive brood in line they started with a punishment scheme but it didn’t reliably deter the undesired behaviors.  They transitioned to a reward scheme but this suffered from ‘inevitable inflation, with ever larger rewards required for ever smaller doings.’ 

(An elegant way of describing entitlement, I thought.) 

They finally settled on something that works brilliantly: They write down all misbehavior on a list that is hung where all can see it.  There. Are. No. Other. Consequences.

Think about it: Punishment didn’t work very well.  Rewards worked for a while and then stopped working. But public exposure with no other consequences succeeded where other measures fell short. 

OK, it's not very scientific but there are plenty of studies out there that demonstrate the effect of public recognition on human behavior.  Is there an application for rewards here?  Absolutely.  I’m not suggesting failure be published on a list in the break room – in fact, please don’t do that, it’s a really bad idea. 

The takeaway is that public acknowledgement is highly motivating. 

Public exposure of failure is motivating in a negative way, i.e., discouraging certain behaviors, which may lead to a reluctance to take chances and other things you probably don’t want in a competitive business setting.  Conversely, public acknowledgement of success creates a desire to be more successful. 

You may recall my post about the company where the reward for successful patents is a foam brain in a jar with your name on it.  I’m still not completely bowled over by foam brains as a reward per se but the principle of publicly recognising achievement is sound.

Why don’t all managers formally recognize individual achievements?  There are many reasons, ranging from not realising it’s important to feeling threatened by high performing team members.  Managers are people too and unless a company has a strong leadership program focused from the top down on developing individuals, recognition can get lost in translation.

The good news is, recognition has gone viral with new social networking and collaboration tools embedded into business applications.  Thanks to social networking platforms anyone can give instant feedback – positive or negative – on individuals, products and companies. 

Companies that embrace social feedback from employees will benefit from a far more complete and unbiased picture of individual contribution than was ever before possible.  I’m just putting it out there but I bet if you compared your current list of critical employees with a new list based on broader social data points you’d get a few surprises.

So, where’s your list?

Laura Schroeder is a global talent specialist at Workday, headquartered in Pleasanton, CA.  She has nearly fifteen years of experience envisioning, designing, developing, implementing and evangelizing global Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions and holds a certificate in Strategic Human Resources Practices from Cornell University.  Her articles and interviews on HCM topics have been published in the US, Europe and Asia.  She lives in Munich, Germany and enjoys cooking, reading, writing, kick boxing (well, kicking things) and spending time with friends and family. If you want to read more from Laura, check out her talent management blog Working Girl or follow her on Twitter @WorkGal.

Picture courtesy of balintataw.

The Best of the Compensation Café 2012 – A Holiday Gift from Us to You

Each year the crew at the Comp Café writes about 200 articles on all things compensation. Many of them are actually pretty darned good. In this spirit, each Café writer has selected a favorite post of 2012. Some were read widely and shared throughout the industry, others are hidden gems you may have missed when they were first posted. Here’s your chance to have a little thought-provoking, cheeky, holiday reading while you wait for reindeer hooves upon your roof. These are some of the best from the best compensation writing team in the business (or one of the best) (maybe around the median?) (nah, we’ll go with the “BEST”). Enjoy and get inspired for a 2013.

Ann Bares: Rewards & Gamification: New Frontier or Next Big Fad?

Used to be that the notion of playing games at work meant sneaking in a hand of Solitaire during a slow moment.  Now gaming is drawing attention as a way to connect people to reward programs and focus them on goal achievement.  Is this the new frontier of engagement or just the next fad?

Jim Brennan: The Compensation Cookbook

Bowing to the unceasing demands of compensation people for a one-stop source of all the secrets of the trade, E. James (Jim) Brennan dedicated his April 1 article to breaking news about the forthcoming Compensation Cookbook from the renowned author H.R. Screwtape.  The Compensation Cookbook is expected to be the last word on 21^st Century state of the art in the field of total rewards.  Readers are encouraged to place their advance orders as soon as possible.

Chuck Csizmar: Balancing Comp 101 with the Workplace

The contribution you can make to your organization is in blending technical knowledge (the how-to) with seasoning and experience to understand what will work for your organization, considering culture and management bias.  Technical knowledge will give you the same answer every time, but knowing how to use that knowledge like a craftsman’s tool to aid in achieving business objectives – that's the key to success as a Compensation professional.

Derek Irvine: You Can Never Give Too Much Recognition

One question I’m often asked is, “Can’t you recognize too much or too often? Doesn’t that water down the effect and impact of recognition?” My answer is nearly always to ask another question, “Have you ever received too much recognition?” The answer is invariably, “No.” Find out why in this post (including why the new Wreck-It Ralph animated movie is on my must-see list).

Margaret O’Hanlon: Your Comp Program Speaks for Itself. Are You Comfortable with That?

It’s tough to be candid with yourself about pay-for-performance practices. This article starts with vignettes from a few companies that don’t realize that they are stumbling. When managers don’t identify high performers accurately (because they prefer to reward their favorites), they don’t realize they’re throwing cold water on productivity and creativity. Most companies can’t afford to stumble these days. Q1 is a great time to both make resolutions and actually start work on them. Here are issues that you can, and should, address in your own backyard to sharpen the focus on results at the same time that you manage the numbers.

Laura Schroeder: Moneyball

Companies tend to overvalue top talent and undervalue everyone else. Assembling a team based on the ‘best’ people you can get for your money isn’t a winning strategy unless money is no object, and even then it’s questionable. This post discusses how the right B team can kick the A team’s butt and how that fact can impact hiring, rewards and performance.

Stephanie Thomas: The Compensation Function is Evolving

This was the Cafe's first infographic – proof that we are evolving right along with the profession. Creating visually stimulating translations of data can be challenging, but the results speak for themselves. It’s great to see that most comp pros (at least those included in the survey) are on the right track. - they recognize the importance of communication and consistency, and are moving toward refinement and specificity. I think this can only improve the compensation function.

Jacque Vilet: Out With Metrics ---- In With Analytics!  

I feel strongly that when compensation decisions are made, Compensation professionals need to use analytics that look toward the future rather than metrics that focus on the past.  The use of analytics will allow Compensation to more closely align a total rewards strategy with the company’s business strategy --- and that’s Compensation’s most important responsibility.

Dan Walter: Is it Time to Change the Equity Compensation Paradigm?

I love equity compensation, but am not currently enamored with how it is being used. This is the starting point for a discussion on how to best evolve equity compensation. The instruments, vesting schedules and stated goals for most of these plans have changed very little over the past 20 years. While people are naturally resistant to change, we are also supremely adaptable. What can we do to restore the purpose and luster to these programs?

Note: to see more from any of the Compensation Cafe writers simply copy and paste their name into the search field on the left. We bet you will find some additional articles that will make your “best” list for 2012.

All the best,

The Compensation Café

(And a special "thank you" from the Editor to Dan, who took time out of a busy year-end schedule to coordinate and compile this gift to our readers.)

It's the Little Things

I was all set to post a completely different article this morning until I got off the phone with the manager of the hotel where I am currently staying. I am staying at a beautiful resort. It is on the ocean and, in fact, my room has a view of the Pacific. The food has been wonderful. The staff has been friendly and helpful. But, I am very tired, a bit annoyed and overall my experience did not meet the promise of the vision created by the instantly visible “big” picture offered by the location.

Let’s trade in the hotel for company. We can switch the room for a department. The food is like my pay. And the staff is like HR and Compensation. So what could possibly be wrong? I am at a great company, in a fantastic department, my pay is wonderful and HR and Comp have been friendly and helpful. How could I be less than happy? Let’s talk about the little things.

When I went to brush my teeth last night the sink didn’t drain. It took almost 5 minutes for it to empty. When I went to sleep the room was a bit warm. I set a cooler temperature on the cool remote and went to bed. A few hours later, in the middle of the night I awoke to an even warmer room. I reluctantly called for assistance after being unable to determine the problem. The person who came to my room was also unable to correct the problem. I chose to stay in the room rather than go through the difficult process of changing to a distant new room.

A couple of hours and catnaps later I had to start working. I went to order breakfast and realized the room had no menu for the multiple onsite restaurants. I opened the Guest Service binder and the very nice metal insignia fell off and onto the glass desktop. I picked up the desk phone to call the front desk and it didn’t work. When I spoke to the front desk (from the functional bedside phone) I explained my issues and they expressed their apologies. They also offered a discount.

Things happen, but understanding that fact does not completely remove their impact.

Imagine the remote as your participant website. The air conditioning is the commute or parking access for your location. The maintenance person is the HR business partner who does not have the tool to answer the urgent question. The metal insignia, the termination provision in your LTI and the desk phone is the customer service line at one of your third party providers. And what about the sink? Heck, let’s just say your sink was clogged this morning. (Even I can run out of metaphors!)

By this point, you may have forgotten how great the company and its people are. You might not remember that pay was great. This is the challenge of the little things. Even though not a single one, or the combined total, of the minor issues I have experienced in the past 24 hours would stop me from staying at this fantastic venue again, they have colored my experience enough that I will without truly experiencing what this place had to offer. When you think about your compensation plans make sure you take care of the little things. When they become problems in a swarm you can lose nearly all of the amazing impact your company and effort should have brought.

Lastly, when the little things fail, don’t spend time reminding people of the good things.  Just fix the little things and move forward knowing that the big stuff will usually speak for itself in the long run.

P.S. Did I mention how good the complimentary coffee and fresh-baked croissant are?

Dan Walter is the President and CEO of Performensation an independent compensation consultant focused on the needs of small and mid-sized public and private companies. Dan’s unique perspective and expertise includes equity compensation, executive compensation, performance-based pay and talent management issues. Dan is a co-author of “The Decision Makers Guide to Equity Compensation”,  “If I’d Only Know That”, “GEOnomics 2011” and “Equity Alternatives.” Dan is on the board of the National Center for Employee Ownership, a partner in the ShareComp virtual conferences and the founder of Equity Compensation Experts, a free networking group. Dan is frequently requested as a dynamic and humorous speaker covering compensation and motivation topics. Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @Performensation and @SayOnPay

5 Ways to Incorporate "Social" Into Your Total Rewards Strategy

How are you using social media in your organization?

If you're like most, you're focusing on increasing brand awareness, making new sales, and attracting new talent. You're probably focusing on the external: external customers, external reputation, external job candidates.

But are you using social media internally? More specifically, are social tools part of your total rewards strategy? If not, you're missing out on opportunities for employee recognition, career development, assisting with work-life balance, and innovation in your compensation and benefits programs.

Here are five ways you can incorporate social tools into your total rewards strategy:

1. Recognition: Social tools can be used to recognize employee accomplishments with everyone throughout the organization, and even with customers! It's fast, it's easy, relatively low-cost and and highly visible. Best Western River North Hotel used social media to recognize Wallace, one of its star employees. Wallace was nominated for the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association's Star of the Industry Award. The company created a Facebook page for Wallace. Not only did the page create recognition for Wallace within the company, customers recognized him through wall posts about his extensive knowledge of the city, the outstanding service he provided them, and their favorite stories about interacting with him at the hotel.

2. Benefits: Aside from relaying information about enrollment deadlines and plan details, social media can be used to encourage participation in benefits programs. Sprint launched its Get Fit Challenge, a 12 week wellness program, through social media. Employees signed up in teams and could log their progress on exercise minutes, pedometer steps, and weight loss using an online website. Rankings in various categories were posted at the end of each week, providing some friendly competition and creating some accountability. Sprint estimates it saved approximately $1.1 million through its social media wellness challenge. 

3. Pay: Combining social media and pay takes some forethought and a lot of creativity, but it can really pay off. 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. Check out Ann Bares' post about IGN's profit-sharing plan at Compensation Force. 

4. Development and Career Opportunities: You use social media to recruit external candidates, why not use it to recruit internal candidates for new opportunities? You can also use social tools for employee development. The Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives uses social tools for their "Aspiring Leaders Program." Because participants are scattered across the country and cannot meet in person, web meetings and secure chat capabilities are used to provide briefings on leadership topics, turn in team reports and assignments, and engage in formal and informal learning. 

5. Work-Life Balance: More and more companies are realizing that flexible schedules and remote work opportunities not only benefit employees in terms of work-life balance, they also create cost savings. Obviously, social tools are making it easier to offer these options by making communication and collaboration easier. One advantage you may not have thought about is that social tools can provide virtual "co-workers" for employees working non-traditional schedules or who are working in physically isolated environments. A big part of work is social. Many people say they wouldn't want to work in an environment without coworkers. If you have employees who are working remotely, provide them with social tools for those informal water cooler conversations with colleagues. 

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. and is the host of The Proactive Employer. Follow her on Twitter at proactivemployr. 

Rewards & Gamification: New Frontier or Next Big Fad?

It was not so very long ago that the notion of playing games at work conjured up images of colleagues sneaking in a hand of Solitaire during a slow moment.  Now gamification, the use of game mechanics to make non-game activities and environments more engaging and fun, is invading organizational life on a number of fronts.  And it's going to be big.  How big? A much-quoted Gartner report on the topic predicts that by 2014, "a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon, and more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application."

In the realm of HR and gaming, Marriott has recently made news with its launch of a game - My Marriott Hotel - to drive employment branding and support its recruiting efforts.  Learning and development is another area presenting a fertile field for gaming applications.

What about rewards?

Gamification offers a potential means to draw in employees and engage them in a reward program.  To get some idea of the ways this might work, consider what Gartner identifies as the four primary ways that gamification drives engagement:

1. Accelerated feedback cycles.In the real world, feedback loops are slow (e.g., annual performance appraisals) with long periods between milestones. Gamification increases the velocity of feedback loops to maintain engagement.

2. Clear goals and rules of play. In the real world, where goals are fuzzy and rules selectively applied, gamification provides clear goals and well-defined rules of play to ensure players feel empowered to achieve goals.

3. A compelling narrative. While real-world activities are rarely compelling, gamification builds a narrative that engages players to participate and achieve the goals of the activity.

4. Tasks that are challenging but achievable. While there is no shortage of challenges in the real world, they tend to be large and long-term. Gamification provides many short-term, achievable goals to maintain engagement.

So, the potential is there.  But the same rules about smart reward plan design still apply - groovy mechanics aside.  Catchy tools are no substitute for clear-eyed discovery and problem definition.  In his article on the topic, one of my favorite sages, John Sumser, shares his worry about our ability to stay grounded in rigorous process and sound practice in the face of this new trend.

You can bet that gamification is going to figure prominently in the misguided attempts to automate stakeholder commitment.

Instead of wondering why we ask employees to do stupid things, we are about to be deluged with gimmicks that try to motivate with fake money, fake status and fake accomplishment.

What's your take?  Can we - will we - use gamification to help connect people in thoughtful and authentic ways to our biggest performance challenges, and to support our sharing the rewards of that collaborative success?  Or will we fall into the trap of simply grabbing the next shiny gold ring?

Game on?

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 services to a wide range of client organizations.  She earned her M.B.A. at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and is a bookhound and aspiring cook in her spare time.  Follow her on Twitter at @annbares.

Creative Commons image "xbox-pad-for-windows-05" by Futurilla

A Few More Savvy Insights into HR Emails

I seem to see HR emails everywhere these days. Remember my June blog, "Ping! Pong! Email! From HR!" In that case, it was the bad vibes of email -- all email -- as a communication channel that I was cautioning HR to pay attention to.

After all, it is time to plan focal review communications. It's no secret that HR is notorious for its emails and I thought that the Harvard Business Review blogger, Sarah Green, provided a valuable caution to those putting together communication strategies.

"Instead of talking with one person and getting something done, we're carrying on simultaneous conversations with hundreds of people and struggling to get anything done."

It's so clearly true, yet we don't want to admit it. HR put so much time into getting the emails right and often takes little or no time for coaching leadership and helping managers overcome obstacles.

This week I read some really interesting research on the subject in a PsyBlog posting called, "50+ Savvy Insights into Workplace Psychology." Here's the savvy topic that got my attention, "Can you get things done without making people hate you?" It's an eternal worry for the neurotic -- er, I mean effective -- leader. 

It wasn't the findings on productivity that got my attention so much. As you might imagine, Ames' & Flynn's 2007 research indicated that low assertiveness produced minimal returns. And higher and higher levels of assertiveness produced diminishing returns.

What got me excited was the researchers' visual. It's about how the employee subjects of the study perceived the leadership abilities of the leader subjects. The wording below is obviously not corporate . . . and it is so wonderfully descriptive.

Along the continuum of assertiveness, employees saw leaders as anywhere from "instrumentally impotent" at the low end to "socially insufferable" at the high end. I almost laughed at the truth of the words.

But, stick with me here. Wouldn't employees have the same continuum for emails? From the emails they delete because they are lame, up to the ones they delete because they've heard from the pushy writer over and over again.

The research drew the continuum as a curvilinear form because they wanted us to know that action to perception wasn't a one-to-one relationship. Jeremy Dean, the hunky PhD candidate who writes PsyBlog suggests that we shoot for the assertiveness "sweet spot" at the highest point of the curve, since the research indicates that it is definitely better to be moderately assertive than not assertive.

Same thing goes for HR communications, especially about performance management. As you develop your year end communications strategy, become aware of how you are asserting the issues and shoot for the sweet spot that will make HR influential.

If HR only shows up on the email screen at the end of the year, most anything you say will be considered pushy. If that's so, is HR the best author for these communications?

Do you send the emails out to warn of deadlines, as is tradition, or do you turn to social media for these "mini" issues? Do you create a content landing page on your intranet with links to all the resources and forms for performance management, compensation and development? If you do, why send repetitive reminder emails when you can expect everyone to "pull" the information they need from one reliable place.

This is obviously not an exact science but it is a sensitive issue with real impact. You don't want HR to be perceived as either impotent or insufferable.

I mean, do you?

Margaret O'Hanlon is founder and Principal of re:Think Consulting. She joined Ann Bares and Dan Walter of the Compensation Cafe to speak the unspoken -- "Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communication" -- at the WorldatWork 2012 Conference. Margaret brings deep expertise in total rewards communications and change management to the dialog at the Café. Before founding re:Think Communications Consulting, she was a Principal in Total Rewards Communications and Change Management with Towers Perrin. Margaret is a member of the Board of Directors 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. Creative writing is one of her outside passions, along with Masters Swimming.

7 Key Trends in Rewards & Recognition

The Incentive Research Foundation recently issued a detailed report that compiles and categorizes research from 46 different sources into its “2012 Trends in Rewards & Recognition” report.

I’ve highlighted seven key trends below with excerpts and my own thoughts.

1) Move Fast

Five year strategic plans no longer serve in a fast-moving, global business world. As organization leaders need to flex and adapt their strategic objectives to changing economic requirements, they need HR systems – including recognition and reward programs – that can flex just as quickly to reinforce those changing objectives in employee daily work.

“‘Fast HR’ encourages throwing out standard tools in favor of more expeditious methods to direct, focus, and energize employees. Non-traditional reward programs are congruent with the ‘Fast HR’ movement in that recalibration is easier and involves fewer legal issues than do standard compensation components. … Moving forward, program owners should expect decision making to be pushed up the chain of command with frequent and abrupt changes in strategy to accommodate shifts in business strategy.”

2) Mobile to the Fore

We now live in a mobile world. Mobile applications will do to business in the this decade what the internet did in the 1990s. Not adapting to mobile will mean being left behind. Indeed, as mobile applications more and more become another way of interacting with the same web-based or SaaS platform, there is little reason to not incorporate mobile into recognition and reward program planning.

“According to McKinsey, 33% of all smartphone owners now prefer using them for Web browsing or e-mail—even when their PCs are nearby. In addition, as more than 50% of mobile applications switch to the next generation base website code (i.e., HTML5), the functional differences between mobile devices and their non-mobile counterparts are becoming negligible. … Better product pipelines, faster processing, and whole generations of native mobile users now in the workforce makes integrating mobile applications a necessity.”

3) Gamification Plays Out

Gamification can play a role in recognition and rewards, but program designers and managers must be careful to ensure they aren’t gaming the wrong behaviors. You never want to “game” a system to encourage more recognition for the sake of recognition alone as that weakens the purpose and intent of the program. Instead, game factors such as “most rapid reward approver” to ensure recognition reaches the intended recipient quickly.

“Increasingly, consumers and employees expect an experience that reflects their own engagement and workflow. At a minimum, program managers should review the achievements required for all reward and recognition programs to ensure their target audiences have been given ample resources and training to achieve the required level of performance.”

4) Research Proves the Point

The weight of research behind moving away from cash-based incentives to non-cash strategic recognition and rewards can no longer be ignored.

“One of the biggest trends has to do with the growing acceptance of non-cash compensation within both science and the C-suite…. In Motivating People; Getting Beyond Money (McKinsey) the authors assert that it’s ‘time to challenge traditional management wisdoms that it is money that really counts.’ Their research points to ‘non-cash motivators (including praise from immediate managers) as being more effective motivators than the three highest-rated financial incentives (i.e., cash bonuses, increased base pay, and stock options).’ They further suggested that, nonmonetary compensation can maximize effectiveness in aligning the goals of the organization with the priorities of its people.’”

5) Economic Stress Impacts Innovation

The last few years have created an environment of fear in organizations. Those that figure out how to overcome the fear by recognizing and encouraging innovation, interaction and teamwork will emerge as the market leaders.

“A lack of consistent recognition has impacted the ‘cooperative’ nature of some work environments. In fact, 59% of managers say that economic conditions—and the competitive stresses and pressures that come with it—have negatively impacted their culture. This ‘fear factor’ within some firms has stifled innovation, creating reluctance on the part of employees to share new ideas or take chances. Recent research supports this, showing that employees at ‘Rewarder Organizations’ generate ideas 250% more frequently than employees of organizations that are not rewarders. Note that 18% of the employees at rewarder organizations were afraid of being associated with failure when taking chances.”

6) Technology Integration Required

Integrating HCM, CRM and recognition and reward systems simply delivers more data value to an organization by giving you more points of information on performance and areas needing improvement.

“All technology-enabled reward and recognition schemes need to be integrated with the company’s internal social media sites and (if applicable) to external platforms as well. … If not already completed, ensure that any systems currently owned or supported by the program can be integrated (as much as possible) with organizational CRM and sales force automation systems. If possible, be aware of your organization’s (or clients’) technology protocols to ensure that you are not blindsided by mandates toward cloud computing or virtualization.”

7) Global Tries to Go Global

Global recognition and rewards isn’t easy. Deploying a program in the US and then rolling it out later in the same exact form to global locations is nearly always doomed to failure. Successful global programs involve globally distributed “influencer” employees from the beginning.

“Generally speaking, although many organizations want to go global with their reward and recognition programs, doing so involves obstacles that are more cultural and managerial in nature: Customs, practices and social norms in emerging economies differ quite markedly from those in the U.S.”

What other trends are you seeing in employee recognition and rewards?

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.

Sometimes the Road Less Traveled leads to a Band of Flying Monkeys

We all get bored. Most of us fill that boredom by exploring something new. Often this leads to an exciting new restaurant, but sometimes it means a terrible meal. Sometimes this means meeting new friends, other times it means getting stuck at a colleague's holiday party listening to stories about office politics and sick children. In my experience, very few compensation professionals are also extreme sports fanatics. I seldom speak to someone in our industry who has recently snowboarded off a cliff or free-dived with white sharks.

I bring this up because we are responsible for a huge portion of our companies' success. It surprises me how often professionals make a decision to follow a new path without first calculating to possibility of the path ending in a band of flying monkeys, rather than a better solution.

Are you following the road less traveled in the spirit of Robert Frost or Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz?

I ask because I still see a lot of compensation professionals acting against their nature when it comes to new programs. When an old plan is not working as well as planned, many choose to roll out a new program. This is done instead of enhancing the features and communication around an older plan. While the problems may be driven by failures in the design of the old plan, it is just as likely they are caused by poor utilization of available plan features or poor communication of the same.

Given our increasing responsibilities and shrinking staff sizes, rolling out a new plan efficiently is often beyond our capabilities.  We frequently discover that completion is impossible when we are already well down the "new plan" road, when turning back is no longer an option. This results in abandonment or, worse, partial roll-out of the new plan.  It can also mean that your old plan may still, by necessity, be your ongoing solution.

This year, explore a quick trip down the future of your current program path and ask yourself if you can get where you need to go without starting all over. You may find that you have simply been doing things by rote when a burst of new energy is all that is needed to reach your destination.

Remember that although Dorothy finally got where she was going, the journey was both arduous and terrifying.  We seldom have the luxury (or desire) of putting our employers and employees through a truly frightening experience. Dorothy had the distinct advantage of an author who could ensure that her story had a “Hollywood” ending. We generally drive the ending of our stories and are held professionally accountable for their success or failure.

Take a few days before 2011 disappears to document the reasons for the success or failure of your current (or recent) compensation plans. Be brutally honest about whether you and your staff could have done anything to have made them more successful.

Might I recommend doing those things, before you start down another unknown path?

Dan Walter is the President and CEO of Performensation an independent compensation consultant focused on the needs of small and mid-sized public and private companies. Dan’s unique perspective and expertise includes equity compensation, executive compensation, performance-based pay and talent management issues. Dan is a co-author of “The Decision Makers Guide to Equity Compensation” , “If I’d Only Known That” and  “Beyond Stock Options.” Dan is on the board of the National Center for Employee Ownership, a partner in the ShareComp virtual conferences and the founder of Equity Compensation Experts a free networking group. Dan is frequently requested as a dynamic and humorous speaker covering compensation and motivation topics. Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @Performensation and @SayOnPay

Why Should I Help You?

Faced with critical skills gaps and an aging workforce, companies are looking for cost-effective ways to develop talent quickly.  One of the ideas in play is implementing mentoring and knowledge sharing programs... which is a great idea if you can get people to share what they know.

Unfortunately, in the majority of organizations there are more reasons for people not to share information.  They may have personal reasons, such as they dislike the person asking, they have no clue, or they just aren’t very helpful (which may be an engagement problem).  Or there may be organizational reasons, i.e., they fear losing leverage or influence, they are incented to focus elsewhere or they don’t have time.

People are naturally reluctant to give away any advantage, particularly in highly competitive environments and uncertain economic times.  Organizationally, companies must find ways to make sharing information a competitive advantage rather than hoarding information. 

Here are a few ways not to do that:

• Ask someone to mentor a high potential then promote the high potential over them.
• Ask an extremely busy expert to mentor a new hire without lightening their work load or recognizing them for their extra efforts.
• Assume 'social media’ will somehow magically inspire people to network and share knowledge in ways that benefit the organization.
• Ask someone to train their cheaper replacement. 

These strategies neglect any form of motivation for the knowledge sharers, such as recognition, development opportunities, measurable objectives or rewards.  In fact, in most of these scenarios the mentor is placed at a disadvantage by helping, which creates a misalignment of objectives.  As a result, some reluctant exchange of information may occur but it won’t transform the organization.

It really comes down to this: How do you get people to share what they know?

There are four key ingredients for making it work: 1) management attention; 2) measurement; 3) tools; and 4) rewards.  Let’s take a closer look at each of these:

1. Management attention - As my Café colleague Derek Irvine put it in his recent post The One Thing You Must Do…, if your top management team doesn’t care, why should anyone else?  For example, a large global organization I worked with had a formal mentoring program where each new employee was assigned to an executive, who was tasked with meeting the employee once a month and smoothing the waters with active sponsorship and sage advice.
2. Measurement - If you don’t have specific goals you're trying to achieve and don’t measure whether you achieve them, you're essentially just bumbling about. How about measuring new hire productivity to track mentoring effectiveness during on-boarding?  Or tracking top performers back to mentors to see which mentors foster the highest performance?
3. Make it easy - There are all kinds of tools out there to facilitate collaboration, networking and knowledge-sharing.  Make sure people have access to them and monitor what actually works and gains traction.  Additionally, make mentoring and knowledge sharing part of the program with clear goals and objectives and - if appropriate - reduced workloads.  
4. Rewards - Deep down most people want to feel useful to others but you can encourage mentoring behaviors by recognizing and rewarding them, as well as ensuring that the best development opportunities go to people who have clearly demonstrated an attitude of service. Because those are the people who will scale and do the most for the organization.

Bottom line: As with anything you're trying to achieve organizationally, people will respond to what you SHOW is important, not what you say is important. 

Laura Schroeder is a global talent specialist at Workday, headquartered in Pleasanton, CA.  She has nearly fifteen years of experience envisioning, designing, developing, implementing and evangelizing global Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions and holds a certificate in Strategic Human Resources Practices from Cornell University.  Her articles and interviews on HCM topics have been published in the US, Europe and Asia.  She lives in Munich, Germany and enjoys cooking, reading, writing, kick boxing (well, kicking things) and spending time with friends and family. If you want to read more from Laura, check out her talent management blog Working Girl or follow her on Twitter @WorkGal.

Either Put Me in Charge or Let Me Be a Lackey. I'm Fine with Either, But I Can't Do Both.

A friend recently updated their status with the title to this article. Ironically, I saw it just as I got off a call with a client who  was explaining that somehow she was expected to serve as both the strategic visionary and tactical processor for her company’s multi-national LTIP programs. The simple request in my friends status update seemed reasonable, well thought-out and familiar. As we traverse the crags of an uneven recovery, companies have found it difficult to create compensation plans that perform as expected. As budgets continue to be bound by uncertainty, companies have been unwilling, or unable, to hire tactical help. This leaves compensation departments in a quandary. When should we strategize and when should we make things happen?

For those of you who are feeling like your personality and activities are being split down the middle, I'd like to suggest a small exercise. Take 4 hours and block it off your calendar. (I know you don’t have 4 free hours, but trust me this may really help.) Let’s just pretend you blocked off 10:00am-2:00pm tomorrow.

• 10:00-10:30: Spend the first 30 minutes making a list of every strategic idea you would address if you were in charge of everything, but not responsible for doing any of the tasks. Rank based on compliance, urgency, cost and benefit.  Call this your “Strategy List”.
• 10:30-11:00: Focus the next 30 minutes making a list of every process you would improve if you didn’t have to worry about planning, administration or reporting tasks. Rank based on compliance, urgency, cost and benefit. Call this your “Tactics List”.
• 11:00-11:30: The next 30 minutes make list of all the tasks you would do if you were never interrupted by other things. Think about the minutiae and get granular. Rank based on compliance, urgency, cost and benefit. Call this your “Tasks List”.
• 11:30-12:00: Go through the Strategy, Tactics and Tasks lists and mark each item that ONLY someone with your skill set or better (not you) can get done. Then mark those that can be done by someone with a lesser skill set.
• 12:00-12:30:  Look at the remaining items. These are the things that you believe ONLY YOU can accomplish. Is this list realistic? Can anything be moved to one of the other lists? When this list is down to two or three items, you are set for a promotion.
• 12:30-2:00: Go have a nice lunch with a friend.  Celebrate that you just figured out how to put yourself in charge or be a lackey.

A very smart manager once told me “irreplaceable is unpromotable.” She made it clear that as long as I was the only one who could do certain things, I would remain the only one doing those things. Turns out, it’s basic logic. If you want to stop doing things on your list, you must first figure out a way for others to do them (or to make the items go away altogether.)

Look at your lists again. Which things do you really want to be doing? Of everything that’s left, can you train, hire, outsource, bring in consulting or temporary staff to get them done? If yes, put together a business case for exactly that. If no, keep working on your lists until the answer is yes. I have seen people change things in a week or two and I have seen cases where the changes were so large or numerous that it would take 6-12 months to get them done. I have never seen company where the changes were impossible.

The key is this: If you want to be in charge, the first step is figuring out how to be in charge. Regardless of whether you want to be a lackey or in charge, the first step is to define what those terms mean. The next step is to clearly communicate to those who can help make the change. This may be your boss, colleagues, or the staff working for you. The key is to show what’s in it for them (WIIFM). If they see the personal benefit, they may be inclined to help.  If you communicate things as a plea for help, you may get short-term traction, but nothing will really change.

So, put yourself in charge or make yourself the lackey, but only you can ensure that you’re not both.

Dan Walter is the President and CEO of Performensation an independent compensation consultant focused on the needs of small and mid-sized public and private companies. Dan’s unique perspective and expertise includes equity compensation, executive compensation, performance-based pay and talent management issues, Dan is on the board of the National Center for Employee Ownership, a partner in the ShareComp virtual conferences and the founder of Equity Compensation Experts a free networking group. Dan is frequently requested as a dynamic and humorous speaker covering compensation and motivation topics. Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @Performensation and @SayOnPay