Vari-phobia

We should openly discuss the fear of variety that seems to permeate our field.  Many seem to feel that everyone should be paid identically, for example.

Consider this recent exchange in the LinkedIn network for compensation professionals.  It has been lightly edited and restated for those who don't subscribe:

Question:  One of my regions has salaries all over the place within a particular range.  Any ideas on closing the gaps? The challenge is that none are outside of range and all will be receiving some % merit this year.

Answer:  Why are you planning a fix without first auditing to confirm a problem?  Diagnosis should precede any prescription.  If you have a normally distributed mix of young and old, junior and senior, experienced and inexperienced, long-service and newbie, high-performers and barely-scraping-bys, your distribution properly should be "all over the place."   If your people are all different, then the pay may well be all different, if that is where the appropriate salaries fall.  Midpoints are arbitrary modal norms for an entire class and every deviation from the middle figure does not necessarily constitute a "gap."

People are not clones but individuals.  Of course, current PC-ness requires sanctimonious platitudes about embracing diversity… but come on, now.  That’s simply not natural.  Compensation professionals therefore continue to act like normal human beings.  We tend to exhibit extreme aversions to variety.  Certainty is preferred to ambiguity.

During my exciting but stressful decades heading  a consulting firm, this “due to a shortage of robots…”  sign was my favorite office poster.  It underlined the hazards and risks of human nature.  When we as a race exhibit variable behavior, that tends to trigger something negative in all of us.
 
Everyone prefers practices that are consistent and even identical.  Many compensation professionals act as though equal = equitable, which it don’t.  It is natural to have a fear of differences because variations create oscillations, changes, challenges, threats, outliers, abnormalities, etc.  There is a progression of negative meanings that flow and escalate from the very concept of different.  But that is a basic characteristic of human beings and an inescapable condition of life itself. 

Same, identical, familiar = safe, reliable, predictable, native and normal.  On the other hand, not-same, different, unfamiliar  = dangerous, unreliable, unpredictable alien and abnormal.   So our lizard-brains operate.  When confronted by variation, we react accordingly, by emotion and instinct, without conscious thought.  The nail that sticks up will be hammered down is a Japanese expression of the same theme:  that conformity is good and individualism is bad.

The tradecraft of our profession teaches us otherwise, but it conflicts with our basic instincts honed by millenia of evolution.  In this most “objective” of trades, we must retain consciously self-aware of our subjectivity born of simple human nature.  Compensation professionals must constantly be aware of their feelings and remain prepared to battle against their animal instincts.
 
Perhaps this is simply another aspect of another of my favorite phrases:  Compensation would be a great profession, if it weren’t for the people. 

What else can we do to improve our ability to deal effectively with this natural human tendency?

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 miqel.com

Comments

[Jacque Vilet]

Great article Jim! You are so right. Equal does not mean equitable. I love your statement: "Compensation would be a great profession, if it weren’t for the people"

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Can't claim either as original thoughts, Jacque, but felt they needed restating. That final phrase is my derivative update of a similar statement frequently made in The Day referring to the "Personnel" function long before the biz was renamed "Human Resources." Not much really new under the sun.