I often talk about employee communications at Compensation Cafe. Today, thought, I'll let WorldatWork do the talking for me. They have a lot to say about real innovations that you should be aware of, and I don't have to tell you that PowerPoint does not figure into the conversations.
Following are their insights into implementing incentive pay and sales compensation, with additional information on how to accomplish their recommendations. If your organization hasn't focused enough on communications in the past, have courage. Video, social media and deep insights from audience analysis are the themes. While you may not be able to invest as much money as the big guys, you can leapfrog from where you are to real improvements even without technology upgrades.
Communicating Effectively for Today's Employee Population
This six-minute video describes how ADP repaired a restructured bonus plan implementation that was running out of steam by eliminating ineffective communication tactics. Once ADP's HR realized their best efforts were faltering, they went back out. By holding focus groups they learned about the variety of employee information preferences. ADP's willingness to iterate the communications from traditional to more personalized is worth understanding, especially since it parallels an important shift in ADP's branding from formal to informal/conversational. (Remember conversations about bringing the brand inside?)
Using Personas in Effective HR Strategy Planning
If ADP's case study leaves you curious, here's deeper insight into how an analysis of your employees' choices, preferences and needs will upgrade your communications, let alone your plan design. Mercer goes beyond the popular "generational" analysis, which tends to rely on generalizations and assumptions. Instead, they ask employees to make choices and identify preferences, then use the data to cluster employees into groups of those who share "wealth," career navigation and health needs -- but who may not necessarily be in the same generation. (Sample take-away: As they say in the video, "When you've met one Millennial, you've only met one Millennial.")
And in case you want to leapfrog into a deeper understanding of how cutting edge types think about communicating with their audiences, here is a real gem from slightly outside of the HR's familiar territory. As of yesterday, Seth Godin is offering an appealing and inexpensive video course called, "A Master Class in Value Creation." Seth is a widely admired fellow blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age. If you want to lead real change in your organization, have a look.
Culture and Communication Are Critical Factors for Sales Compensation Policies
This article reports WorldatWork's survey findings on what it takes to achieve a successful launch of a sales compensation plan. Their analysis puts effective communication at the top of the four critical success factors gleaned from the survey.
Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP collaborated with Ann Bares and Dan Walter to create the DIY guide to compensation leadership, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications @ https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication. Margaret is founder and Principal of re:Think Consulting. She brings deep expertise in compensation, communications and leadership to topics like the CEO Pay Ratio, performance management and compensation implementation discussions at the Café. Margaret is a Board member of the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA). Before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson.
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