The Compensation Cookbook

Imagine having the solution to every pay issue in one volume!  The Compensation Cookbook will solve all your problems.  It promises to provide the perfect recipe for virtually every Total Rewards challenge.  Instant answers to any remuneration issue are made available at your fingertips!  No compensation chef should be without this essential guide to serve up the ideal menu in your café, restaurant, or eatery ... and even in your private dining room.  Spice up your initial cafeteria offerings with the perfect blend of base, incentive, extrinsic, variable, flex, step, intrinsic, static and untrinsic elements.

The long-awaited authoritative dictionary of decisions contains every remuneration formula and reward metric required for instant success in the compensation trade, says its editor, the noted Total Rewards guru H.R. Screwtape.  This massive manual of metrics should be available on February 29, 2013, according to the distinguished publishing house of Ratchet, Gimme, Compound & Sons and Daughters and One Odd Nephew.  Plans are being considered for conversion of the initial cuneiform script version into PDFs, then to electronic text and eventually even an interactive Cloud format.  Libraries have already announced plans to place the weighty tome next to the Phlogiston topic section of their Research Reference stacks.

Sample:  The Timely Turnaround Technique  

1. Take 3,985 employees and trim the outliers (see Chapter 19)
2. Freeze the pay of the remaining lowest 5% of performers and place it in a Frozen Fund
3. Toss the candidates into a cauldron and bring them to a boil 
4. Whip them into a froth with a basic mix of bland intrinsic motivators (see the Appendix for a list of Pink-approved incentives) leavened with a pinch of sweet gold dust
5. Garnish the survivors with distributions from the Step 2 Frozen Fund according to The One and Only Magic Matrix (see Chapter 8)
6. Serves exactly the right number (as specified in the Chapter 33 Master Count Table)

David J. Thomsen, PhD, founder of the rival pay survey publishing house ERI Economic Research Institute, expressed admiration at the ambition of the researchers but scoffed at the prospect that any one book could encompass the entire realm of tradecraft knowledge, saying: “Really?  No way.”  The even more distinguished Keystone Award Winner PhD Jay Schuster retorted with an argumentative but articulate lengthy book review response: “Yes, way.”  Readers are invited to decide for themselves.

Elements of The Compensation Cookbook include:
• The most popular sales incentive programs found at TARP firms in 2007
• Bilingual pay premium rates for left-handed English-speakers at Venezuelan oil export companies
• The one average pay increase rate uniformly suited for every job at every employer
• Staffing formulae that will assure the appropriate growth of the HR department
• Calculators to compute the perfect benefit package for each new hire
• A universal holiday schedule appropriate for application in any nation on Earth
• The correct pay compression emergency relief valve setting
• A Taxonomy of Pay Premiums, detailing all the ways to justify demanding extra money
• Advanced methods for forced performance distributions to guarantee strict limits on the proportion of workers permitted to excel
• Special applications for outside consultants hired to cook the books

FLASH Update:  Unfortunately, it appears that publication may be delayed due to a special request by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. OPM asked that the release of the trade secrets be deferred until the revolutionary consensus Best Practice concepts of The Compensation Cookbook are ridiculed tested by the National Academy of Sciences and broken ruined applied in the Federal sector first.

April Fool!

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.), will express his opinion on almost anything, and has admitted to having a sarcastic sense of humor.

Creative Commons Image "Happy April Fools Day" by Mykl Roventine

Comments

[Joe]

Good one Jim. I would read, scratch my head, start over, then I skipped to the bottom.

[Warren Heaps]

Jim -

I am shocked you failed to mention the upcoming version of this great work for the iPad, iPhone and Android tablets. After all, we will all want to just make gestures at this work.

Good job!

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Believe iCad, uPhone, Raspberry and Androx will be the preferred SmartFone applications, because they will pay more for the license to the talent treatise than the others. After all, that's what comp is all about, right?

[Scott Boynton]

This put a smile on my face this Monday morning, when it seems the world is on spring break but I'm buried under merit, stock and bonus files. Thanks!

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Chapter 6 addresses the supreme value of smiles. Thank YOU, Scott, for the ultimate sign of appreciation in this difficult world.

[Windsor Lewis]

OMG, Jim this is hilarious! I was actually pretty excited thinking you had written a new book until I read a little further and (finally) noticed the humorously absurd references. You've totally brought a smile to my day; thank you! (But please do think about writing another book soon!!!)