What's Missing?

When leadership talks about results and plans recognition for 2013?

When division heads assess their key talent needs for 2014?

When your company considers whether you are still paying competitively?

When you talk with leadership and Finance about the 2013 compensation budget?

When your managers use your performance management software (or forms)?

When your employees learn about their merit increase and/or incentive?

From the schedule you follow for this whole process?

In the collaboration and coordination between compensation and other HR functions when the end-of-the-year process is planned?

There's always something missing, some ingredient or change that gets overlooked, sometimes just because it would be uncomfortable -- to tell the truth to power, to shift the budget in another direction, to expect managers to treat pay-for-performance as a business issue.

For example, odds are there's data that hasn't been accessed which could help you build a more measurable process. Or a budget that could be allocated more productively.

Reflect on your experience and think about the stories you've heard from employees and managers. Figure it out. What's missing? There's so much to be gained from asking this question when you're developing your close-of-year strategy (and schedule), and you can safely ask  the question even as a junior member of the team.

Margaret O'Hanlon is founder and Principal of re:Think Consulting. She'll join Ann Bares and Dan Walter of the Compensation Cafe to speak the unspoken -- Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communication -- in an upcoming book. Margaret brings deep expertise in compensation, career development and communications to the dialog at the Café. Before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal with Towers Watson. Margaret earned her M.S. and Ed.S. in Instructional Technology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Creative writing is one of her outside passions, along with Masters Swimming.