Editor's Note: Today's post comes to us courtesy of guest contributor Jacque Vilet.
Being consistent; that is usually the mantra of HR, especially when it comes to compensation. Many managers understand “consistency”. Which means that all that time you’ve spent on compensation training and communication with management has paid off, right?
Has it?
There are occasions where the consistency mantra can get us into trouble. Let me share an example that happened to me several years ago at Company X. I was cruising along one day at work, putting the finishing touches on merit budget recommendations for all the company’s operations outside the U.S. I had been working feverishly to finish in order to give the information to the CFO before he went ahead and plugged in the U.S. merit budget increase worldwide. (We’ve all had that happen haven’t we!).
I received a phone call from a manager who sounded panicked. He wanted to talk to me right away. I recognized his name as an Engineering Manager who had recently been promoted to a position with responsibility for an entire product line ----- including employees in 5 different countries. This international “stuff” was all new to him.
When he arrived at my office he showed me a spreadsheet he had prepared with all his employees worldwide and their salaries. In one column he had their local salaries in local currency. In another column he had their salaries converted to U.S. dollars.
He was agitated and told me that we had to “fix” the salary problem immediately. When I asked him what the problem was, he looked at me with disbelief and pointed out their pay was not “consistent”. For example his employees’ salaries in Japan were averaging US$30,000; employees in Germany were averaging US$120,000 and his employees in the U.S. were averaging US$80,000. He couldn’t believe that I couldn’t see the problem.
I blessed him silently for caring enough about his employees to at least review their compensation. He was taking his new responsibilities seriously and trying to do the right thing. I knew I could go into a lengthy explanation about why his issue was not relevant and even give a little economics lecture. But realizing that he needed just a simple answer, I told him that his employees in every country were being paid competitively for their jobs. If they transferred to another country permanently, then we would have to make adjustments. But, for now, their salaries were very competitive in Japan, Germany, the U.S. and all the other countries where they happened to be working.
I showed him survey data for each country so he could see how his employees’ salaries compared to the same jobs in that market. I told him that the issue of “consistency” does not mean that we pay employees in the same job the same salary worldwide. It just means that we pay employees competitively in their own country.
After poring over the surveys he felt much better. After all, as an engineer he couldn’t dispute “data” could he?
I have had the same issue with C level management as well. They just can’t seem to wrap their head around anything but US$. From a cost to the company perspective they are right. But when it comes to paying salaries, setting policies for vacation time, setting annual bonus targets ---- they need to understand the importance of local competitiveness and cultural impact.
The lesson I learned here was that as simple as we try to make compensation concepts for managers, there are still issues they don’t understand. While these may be the things that are second nature to us as compensation professionals, we need to practice getting “outside” our own heads and trying to see the world as our managers see it.
Jacque Vilet, President of Vilet International has over 20 years’ experience in International Human Resources with major multinationals such as Intel, National Semiconductor and Seagate Technology. She has worked with both local nationals and expatriates and has been an expat twice during her career. Jacque holds the CCP, GPHR and SWP (Human Capital Institute). She is a member of WorldatWork, Society of Human Resources Management and the Human Capital Institute. She is co-chair of the Global HR professional emphasis group for the Dallas chapter of SHRM. She is a regular contributor to HCI, HR.com and IHR Forum.
Image courtesy of Stocks on Wall Street’s Monthly Newsletter
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