Managers Managing Pay

"Remember, with great power comes great responsibility." ... who would have thought that a Marvel Comics superhero trilogy would impart such wisdom on how we approach our responsibility as Rewards Professionals in supporting first-time people leaders. The famous words from Spider-Man wholly encompass the expected increase in accountability, when a one-time employee is appointed to “manager” status. 

For many, management is the next step on the career ladder.  It is a role that can mold and redefine the strategic direction of the organization and its workforce, for better or worse.  While we can go on many tangents about what defines an effective leader, as experts in total rewards we play an integral role in setting leadership, particularly first-time managers, up for success.  Doing so means compensation should be a key part of any management training or onboarding program.

Navigating pay becomes more complex when it’s no longer about your own, but instead involves the growth, development, and performance of an entire team.  So how best to manage? Listed below are a few examples to draw upon as new managers take on real-world compensation.

(1) Draw on personal experiences – sometimes, the best lessons are learned from the past.  How you evolve, grow and what you take from previous compensation-related experiences can help you step into the shoes of your employees today.  Consider the questions or feelings you had and the type of pay conversations you engaged in.  More often than not, your team may be struggling with the same questions you once grappled with.

(2) Assess the good, the bad, and the ugly – interactions with management can shape our leadership style.  Take what you can from the good ones, while avoiding the poor.  Consider the quality of the discussions that made pay, performance, and professional growth meaningful and inspiring.  These are the qualities to emulate, refine and make authentically yours.  On the contrary, keep in mind but at a further distance, the behaviors and conversations that impeded your engagement, sense of value and worth.   

(3) Get educated – if you had not heard of compa-ratio, merit increases, and or salary ranges before – well now you do!  As a manager, your repertoire of compensation terms will undoubtedly expand, and so will the decision-making, transparency, and handling of actual employee pay.  Time invested towards understanding your organization’s pay practices, policies, and the mechanics around performance management will be fundamental towards instilling a sense of pay confidence for yourself.  An inherent piece of the employee/manager relationship is becoming the point person in addressing salary questions.  This is why your “buy-in” to the organization pay program will be essential in being able to articulate a complete total rewards perspective to current and prospective employees.

(4) Know your team, get the facts – do yourself the benefit of understanding each employee's lifecycle; uncover their past, know their current positioning amongst the salary structure, and where professionally they aspire to be.  The context you have for each enables you to have the employee-centric conversations that are specific to their performance, their growth, and any pre-existing legacy scenario that you may have inherited.

Managing people, their pay, and the emotions that come with it can be tricky.  You will not be able to please them all, but if you lead with the right intentions then one can hope you will empower those that will come thereafter.

Reena Paul (CCP, GRP) works as 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 with Reena directly on  LinkedIn. 

Image source: iStock image with credit to Pablo Varela

Comments

[E James (Jim) Brennan]

Suspect Spidey cribbed that adage from Luke 12:48 or from the even older "Sword of Damocles" analogy, but I always heard that the secret to expertise is to steal from the best sources.

Another old adage is "no one quits over money... it's always a bad boss." There may be a few exceptions, but the immediate supervisor is the face of the employer. They alone are the fulcrum upon which all the organization's policies and practices rest and turn. A boss's mistakes are eternal and often fatal.

Note that my warnings deal with supervisors who have actual direct reports vs "managers" who frequently have much greater incomes but merely handle functions, systems and activity areas. Managing people is much harder than managing things.

Every new and many old "people managers" should read Reena's excellent and timely reminder!

[Max]

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