Ready for Cutting Edge Communications?

The major consulting firms are announcing that a new era in benefit communications is coming, with big advancements in technology. It got me wondering when, and from where, will the cutting edge improvements in compensation communications be coming? We have no place to go but up, so improvements could happen at any time. The only obstacle is money, of course, which -- candidly, frankly and truthfully -- is insurmountable in most organizations.

So are we just going to let compensation communications be left in the dust? Face it, those auto-messages provided by compensation and performance management administration systems don't qualify as communications, so don't even try to count them in. They are equivalent to robocalls for the most part (and you know what that means).

What if you could innovate without changing your budget? Would that ever be possible? You know I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't have a pretty good idea to pass along, so here goes.

This year, make managers your primary communication audience. Figure out all of the ways that you can support them in pay and performance decision-making and give them first shot at your budget. Employees may come out short when it comes to Qs and As etc., but wouldn't that be solved by having a manager that can give expert answers on his/her own? After all, that's the way it's supposed to work.

What if you built a FAQ library that helped managers think through salary increase decisions (as well as explain the decisions to their employees)? Or how about building an online resource that helped them understand the pros and cons of giving everyone the same bonus, and showed them simulations for different payout scenarios? How about a deep briefing on what competitive total compensation means and how Human Resources makes it come about? Or a group case study simulation that covers  pay decisions for a whole division, with each participant taking a department, and then collaborating on standards for ratings and increases across the division?

You have your own wish list, I bet. Get together with your colleagues and blue sky it for once, listing everything you wish you could do for your managers -- and everything you wish your managers could do. Then, before you choose your priorities, list the outcomes for employees that would come from each of your ideas. Step back and look at those outcomes. If you gave managers what they needed, would you be addressing employee needs, too? I bet you would get closer to "effectiveness" than if you started by putting employee needs first once again in your planning.

"If you can push through that feeling of taking a risk, really amazing things can happen." (Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!) Compensation communications needs investment, no question about it, but let's not shut out thoughtful innovations this time through.

Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. A former Board member for the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA), Margaret coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.

Comments

[Chris Dobyns]

This all sounds eminently correct in the context of "today". I've seen and heard of organizations that are already contemplating the next level of effectiveness and like a host of other delivery vehicles to better meet employee needs - those strategies are oriented around customization at the individual employee level ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t7kV2LBit6noKXnOoO07xeP3e_nY1AR8/view?usp=sharing ).

I believe the better-informed manager is the right approach for now, but in 2-3 years the shift will have occurred that is optimized to meet individual employees where, when and how they prefer to receive all nature of communications from the organization.