The Perils of Compensation Communications

Act One: Yikes. My client, a Compensation Director, is finishing up communications for her company's focal review and cash awards, which will be announced next week.

But she has just had a bit of a shock. Two weeks ago, her Compensation staff briefed all of the field HR practitioners about this year's budget and the approach to communications.Today, she's gotten questions from the same HR practitioners that ignore the information provided in the presentation. It's as if they weren't actually in the meeting. Her worry is growing because the field HR practitioners can actually ruin the communication strategy if they provide misinformation.

Why am I telling you this? Because it happens all the time. And we're the culprits. Project leaders with the very best intentions and strong, innovative communication strategies. I've seen examples of this in all sorts of organizations.

Many communication strategies deliver planning and decision-making tools to their managers. Videos and explanations are written for employees. Rarely does anyone put as much preparation into the communications support for the HR practitioners. The very people you are relying on to reinforce the communications messages, lead the training, answer employees' questions. As with managers and employees, you have to repeat and reinforce the information you share with your HR coworkers if you want it to "stick."

Act Two: There are solutions.  The field HR's job is as demanding and as visible as any managers' during a roll-out. If you want the planned communications to be effective, develop tools to help your HR coworkers do their job.

• Regular updates on the progress of the communications team. They could be in the form of a blog, if your online capabilities can support it.
• Checklists of the communications that will be distributed. It is a snapshot of all the pieces, so they have a way to track their release and how one builds on the next.
• Previews of videos and/or online materials that their managers and employees will expect them to have some familiarity with.
• Customized Qs and As based on the demographics of their employee group. Do they have long-service people who are maxing out? Lots of new employees building up steam for a compression problem? Employees who are never satisfied with their incentives? Prepare them with well-worded messages that can be reinforced repeatedly.
• Train-the-trainer. You may plan train-the-trainer a number of different ways depending on the abilities of your presenters but never, never skip it, even if your presenters are very skilled. All presenters need a running start. Talking a presentation over with their colleagues will give them insights into employees' hot topics and new facilitation techniques.

If this sounds like old news to some of you, that's a relief. But in my experience, most of us need to be reminded. Include HR throughout the communications project and keep them in the loop from the beginning. You'll sleep better the weekend before the rollout. Your coworkers will respect the effort you make. You can be confident that employees and managers will get a better, more consistent picture of their compensation.

Act Three: This company is using social media. Want to know more?  In case you have a minute to read on, I thought you might be interested in how this company is handling compensation communications.

They have three communications objectives for their HR team during focal review: Expand employee communications, make communications more direct and help employees understand the competitive value of the cash compensation that their hard work has funded.

We've created a strong main page on the intranet that will lead to a "one-stop shop" for all information about focal review for both managers and employees. Plus, we're including a blog in our communications strategy. The head of Compensation will share his own experiences as manager, as well as his perspective as leader. One of the goals is to give employees an open forum to share their comments and pose direct questions about their compensation. He'll use the blog and its comments capability to keep a dialog going across the organization. Exciting stuff.

Epilogue: One last thing.  Let's celebrate last week's great news -- 290,000 people back at work. If they joined your company, thank them -- your job security has improved, too!

Margaret O’Hanlon is founder and principal of re:Think Consulting.  She has decades of experience teaming up with clients to ensure great Human Resource ideas deliver valuable business results.  Margaret brings deep expertise in total rewards communication to the dialogue at the Café; before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal in Total Rewards Communications with Towers Perrin.  Margaret earned her M.S. and Ed.S. in Instructional Technology at Indiana University.  Creative writing is one of her outside passions.

Comments

[Laura Schroeder]

I enjoyed this. We've all been there: you roll everything out and then wonder if pod people attended the meetings. The problem is that compensation is kind of tricky so a lot of people tune out. And if you explain it in a highly detailed, pedantic way, you lose more of your audience. Best to keep it simple and if possible, witty. Marketing, marketing!

[Margaret O'Hanlon]

Thanks, Laura. B2B. HR2HR. I'm hoping for a new marketing trend!