Total Reward Lessons from the Olympics

For a few momentous weeks, the world’s best athletes and benevolent fans will witness some of the greatest achievements and feats in sports.  The 2020 Summer Olympics are in full swing and as an inherent need, I find myself trying to see whether there is a link to total rewards.  Unsurprisingly, there is! 

Some of these lessons are positive takeaways, others emphasize the stark realities of incentive design, while another will only magnify a persisting inequity in how we value the essential asset at the heart of all this, the employee or athlete.

Starting with the good.  The Olympic Games exemplify the employee life cycle.  An elite star is not born overnight; likewise, an expert professional grows and develops with time.  In addition to selling a customized total rewards package catered to an employee's preference, organizations must also diagnose how each of their employees learns best and sell your development opportunity.

No one athlete is the same, their diet, training, and conditioning regiment will be specifically designed to ensure their optimum success. The role of the coach is to seek out the right tools, have a plan and the platforms to facilitate their growth.  As business leaders and people managers, we are the workplace “coaches.”  Our duty is to advocate and solicit feedback, enabling us to design the training and development (“L&D”) programs that will ultimately meet the unique learning styles of our employees.  By integrating a continuous performance management program with L&D, we build a consistent feedback loop.  Steadiness in this process creates real-time performance adjustments so the next evaluation of the output inches closer to the individual’s goal.

The second learning reveals the reality of most things competitive; there will be only one winner.  Many will try, but the percentage of which reaches the top is minimal.  This statistic is a key consideration when designing an affordable and sustainable incentive program.  The internal spread of performance will take the form of a bell-shaped type of distribution, the majority of employees meeting and falling just below the “podium” level.  Leaders rating everyone exceptionally will not be feasible towards managing costs, nor is it conducive towards differentiating the good vs. the gold medal performer.

Finally, there is a real price to pay when striving for Olympic glory.  Despite all the sacrifices, the payout doesn't seem to align with the time and effort exerted.  Like the workplace, we have a ways to go in eradicating gender pay inequities and creating equal opportunities for all.  Similarly, the Olympics illuminates several instances where the practice is questionable in terms of treating and valuing athletes fairly.  For example, do they all have similar access to funding and training needs? Are female athletes that are performing to the same level as the men's team paid equivalently? What about the unfair balance of favoring one sport versus another, due to its influence on profits?

While the Olympics opens the world to diversity, it may be falling short in its efforts to equitably include, value, and reward, qualities that all employers should bear in mind and better execute upon in their workplace.

Reena Paul (CCP, GRP) is a Senior Compensation Consultant.  She is passionate about all things “total rewards” and has experience in dealing with all stakeholders of an organization and strategizing optimum client-focused solutions.  A lover of data and the story it tells, Reena enjoys the exploration of presenting and discussing compensation with a fresh perspective.  Connect and contact Reena directly on LinkedIn

Photo by Bryan Turner by Unsplash

Comments

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Good stimulating presentation, Reena.

Agree with all points,while observing that "equity" is essentially subjective, based on the criteria applied by the observer. Fairness is not a measure related to standard distribution or determined by sortition. Social values are not the same as commercial values, either. I doubt that there will ever be any meaningful consensus on value weights, nor do they respond to statistical analysis.

The biggest issue in the field of Total Rewards is human nature, which continues to operate outside the range of predictive statistics, accounting or other mathematical calculations. Never boring, though!