Compensation Cafe

Cafe Classic: A Practitioner's Recipe For Success

Editor's Note:  Interested in a successful compensation career?  Chuck Csizmar shares some Classic tips!

Whenever I come across self-help materials intended to assist Compensation practitioners with their professional growth I often notice an overly large emphasis on the technical side.  And when reading internet blogs meant for the same audience there again seems a constant litany of how-to guidance on, again, technical issues.

That's all well and good, but . . . .

It seems to me that becoming a master technician in the compensation "science" is not by itself going to be an effective strategy for success in the corporate world.  In fact, sometimes that technical prowess can prove somewhat of a hindrance, as it could limit upward opportunities.

Checklist of Useful Competencies

If you rely solely on your technical capabilities, while remaining in your cubicle all day, and if you're saddled with the personality of a troll, you're going to have an uphill struggle toward success.  You're going to need more to work with, so print this checklist and tape it to your office wall.  It could save your career.

• Flexibility: Be willing to listen and keep an open mind.  Become known as a problem solver. Don't quote policy except as a last result.  Have a reason for your actions that can be easily explained.
• Understand the business and how Compensation impacts it:  You're not on an island cut off from the rest of the business.  Learn how what you do interacts with and has an effect on the business. What you do should relate to and support organizational objectives.  If not, know why not.
• Have a personality:  Basic stuff, but have a ready smile, greet people, shake hands and in general show a warm side to those you interact with.  Become an engaging person.  Oh, and try to be sincere about it.
• Don't be a Geek/Nerd: Don't spend all your time spouting technical language and showing off charts & graphs.  As if all those figures are self-explanatory and you're merely the spokesperson.  That data should be the backdrop to your explanations, not the focus.  Don't be an analyst when you need to be a leader.
• Be able to work a room: Leave the introvert at home and develop the skill of being comfortable holding multiple conversations in a room of strangers, colleagues or even senior leadership. That will build your image in a positive way.  If you're an introvert, work on it.
• Be persuasive:  You will not get too far by dictum, so work on your reasoning and communication skills.  You need to be able to influence others, to gain agreement on the strength of your rational arguments.  "My way or the highway" doesn't generate a warm response.
• Become the one who gets lots of Christmas cards: That's your goal for next year, to be someone that colleagues think of when preparing their lists.  That is usually a good sign, because they like and/or respect you. 
• Play (a bit of) politics:  I don't like this one, but it's true.  Politics exist in every organization, so you need to be able to play the game at least a little.  Don't think that you can "stay above the fray," as you're a professional or some such rot.  The powers that be will eat you alive. But as best you can try to remain neutral and project yourself as someone that all sides can trust.
• Yes, be technically proficient:  Of course, you still have to know what you're talking about, but the higher up you climb the food chain the less reliance you'll need on your personal technical capabilities.  You will become valued and judged for what else you bring to the plate.

Nowhere on this list will you find the ability to rattle off the overtime exemption criteria for the FLSA, or the key rating descriptions in your point-factor evaluation scheme.  And nobody is going to swoon when you describe linear regression, correlation coefficients or the difference between the Cost of Living and the Cost of Labor.  Your audience, your clients, your senior management will expect more.

But if they like you, if you have an engaging personality and can work well with others, well then, you're halfway there.

Don't Limit Yourself

Unless you want to.  Unless you are someone who prefers the technical work, to the exclusion of the managerial side of the craft. 

Those employees are out there.  I've met them.  They 're happy with what they do.

But if your repertoire of competencies leans too heavily toward excel spreadsheets and data analysis your ability to "pass through the curtain" from the hard side of Compensation (technical) to the soft side (managerial) will be limited.  Because Master Technicians tend to remain just that, both by competency and by interest.

Likely you have seen your own examples of individual contributors (technicians) who have been promoted beyond their capabilities - or their interests.  Those employees are rarely successful.

So pick and choose.  If you want to go through the beaded curtain be certain to bring more along with you than a calculator and a spreadsheet. 

Warm up that smile!

Chuck Csizmar CCP is founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations.  He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant.  Chuck is a broad based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation.  He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a clowder of cats.

Creative Commons image "Vintage Recipe Box" by Laura Stokes Estrada

Untangling Rewards to Enable

For most rewards professionals we can recognize that a compensation program that considers intention in its design will be a package consisting of a myriad of pieces, extending beyond the traditional pie chart we are accustomed to seeing on annual reward statements.  Employees are instead seeking a rewarding career, one that creates a sense of emotion tied to value, purpose, and fulfillment.

Stepping beyond base pay, there is an increased need for workplace cultures and environments to redefine themselves and put in focus their value proposition, centered on today's working construct.  Investing in our employees is much more dynamic and all-encompassing.  Our pay programs traditionally have been designed with a primary objective to attract and retain key talent, but once talent has been acquired it is within our best interest to set our workforce up for success.  Motivation and engagement is a two-way street, partially influenced by the employer, while the rest is impacted by the individual’s sense of the call to action or desire to execute the task at hand.

Establishing a workplace foundation that enables versus constricts is as valuable as providing a competitive wage.  For many working professionals, particularly top performers, having the autonomy, flexibility, and latitude to innovate and generate is a necessary stimulant to produce great work.  Subsequently, most incentive or pay-for-performance mechanisms are linked to an individual’s output.  Hence, all the more reason for employers to define the ultimate pay mix as being a compilation of tangible and intangible pay-related ingredients.

For many, we live in a workplace dynamic which includes an expectation of remote work capability.  Our ability to quickly transition, mobilize and accept this way of work demonstrated that, as employers, we do have it within us to respond and adapt to new working norms.  This is exactly why our response to the raging war on talent will require another rapid paradigm shift to overcome this hurdle.  Meaning again, the need to go beyond the pay quotient.  Consider, for a moment, if you are truly investing in your employees.  Are they equipped and enabled with the right tools, systems, and process improvement abilities to get work done?  More importantly, do they have the access they need and as few obstacles in their way?  

If the answer is no or if you are unsure, then best to investigate.  The simplest starting point is to consider your own work.  What is limiting you from moving on to the next task?  Upon whom are you reliant for decisions?  What potential system is your Achilles heel, and simply working against you instead of with you?

Employees seek to have a clear line of sight.  Granted, challenges will come, but the frequency and extent of how much they drag progression down can present an exhausting battle to contend with.  When the majority of staff have the desire to provide a meaningful contribution, it is in the best interest of employers and leaders alike to lay the foundation by investing in a total rewards package that provides versus prohibits.  Doing so will impact your ability to not only retain but can be the specific ingredient for facilitating high performance and seeing a real return on investment.

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: Unsplash image with credit to Alistair MacRobert

Rewarding and Retaining What is Learned

Organizations of today are faced with increased pressure given the impending "rise of resignations." Despite what has been coined as this year's news story, there's enough reason for businesses to take a concerted effort in how we retain talent. My thinking of talent retention goes beyond actual headcount, but rather touches on the preservation of the intellectual property our workforce encompasses. When good talent leaves, quite often a skill set, attribute or specific ability unique to them departs also.

Effective organizations will have the tools, processes, and practices in place to ensure a continuous transfer of knowledge, however, consistent application of this is easier said than done. When creating our unique employee value proposition, we lean into other reward elements, namely providing training and development opportunities. When we as employers begin to fund the courses that are upskilling and enhancing the expertise and credentials of their workforce, we should in turn be expecting an application of these new learnings in the workplace too.

Before rolling out the expectations on the exchange transaction of training and development, organizations must first believe in this philosophy. Consider the following few reasons of why it counts to have employees demonstrate applied learning:

1. Because you paid for it! With stretched salary budgets every dollar counts. This means how we spend and invest. Our investment in our workforce should have an element of ROI.  Our equipping employees with the knowledge, skills, and abilities beyond what they have should, by normal calculations, have a reciprocal effect of increased positive output in delivery of work.

2. Increases employee engagement. Having a fulfilling career is often centered around finding one's purpose and meaning. Creating a workplace environment and culture that encourages individuals to teach, leverage, and utilize new techniques and in turn rewards these outputs demonstrates your acknowledgment and value of what they are doing. For an employee, seeing their direct impact creates a greater line of sight, strengthening and empowering their self-worth and commitment towards the organization.

3. Knowledge security - expecting employees to share, educate and document newfound learnings is imperative to ensuring your organization is not left with critical gaps. Employees can sharpen and build their "knowledge tool kit" at our expense but we become exposed and at risk when talent leaves.  If and when they do leave, then gone too are the integral steps that reside only in their heads.

As we try to maintain the workforce we have, it is worth the effort to strategize and develop creative approaches to getting more from the investment in our employees. Leveraging goal setting and tying incentives to the demonstration of "how" the learning was used and "what" the outcomes were could be one sure way of retaining stability and security in how you run your daily business operations. 

Reena Paul (CCP, GRP) is a Senior Consultant with LifeWorks Compensation Consulting Team.  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 on LinkedIn. 

Image source: Unsplash image with credit to Element5 Digital 

 

Reena Paul (CCP, GRP) is a Senior Consultant with LifeWorks Compensation Consulting Team.  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 on LinkedIn. 

Image source: Unsplash image with credit to Element5 Digital 

Bob's Your Uncle

I once lived and worked in England for five years as an expatriate, and during that time my HR team took great pleasure in confusing me with English words that held little meaning for an American.  Often, I could even repeat the phrase back to them, yet still didn't understand what the words meant.

As the Brits often told me, we speak the same language, but we don't.  My colleagues loved to "take the mick out of me" (poke innocent fun).

One example that has stuck with me the years is "Bob's your uncle."  Imagine the first time I heard that phrase.   What again?

Within the UK it's a common phrase that means "And there you go" or "Everything's fine now."  But the words just didn't make sense to me.  But like so many colloquialisms out there, finding the root cause going back decades or more proved a challenge.  It took me almost two years to find someone who could explain where the term originated (we didn't have Google back then).

Easy Peasy

Two hundred or so years ago there was a high-ranking Member of the English Parliament (Robert, Lord Salisbury) who held great sway (political influence) across the British Empire.  This was a powerful man, and one who believed in nepotism and political cronyism, so it was not unusual for even his distant relations to find themselves gifted with important government positions.

Such favored office holders with familial connections held positions of power, influence, and easy living.  Over time the phrase was born, that everything would be easy peasy (fine and dandy) if "Bob's your uncle."

And That Applies How?

Which got me to thinking about a message I had received a few weeks back from a recent graduate, one who wanted to make a career in HR, and specifically Compensation.  This inexperienced fellow posed a basic query, one often asked by those just beginning their careers.  "How can I achieve success in my chosen profession (Compensation)?"   He wondered whether there was a blueprint, a map, or a guide of sorts to keep him on the straight and narrow.  He had hoped to find a "Compensation for Dummies" book from Amazon.

Of course, there are no rules, no instruction manuals or pointed arrows on the road, each guaranteed to take you by the hand and show the way to career success.  Instead, the experiences of those who went before you are varied and distinct in so many ways, usually a compilation of diverse career choices, working for supervisors who influenced for good or ill, differing type and operating style of employers, and of course the series of unanticipated head knocks (lessons learned from mistakes) that one gains over the length of a career.

What happened to me may not happen to you, I thought.   There is no, "Read this and you'll be fine."

So, I condensed my experiences, career preferences, personal work philosophy, and gut instincts into a set of generic principles that could (or should) provide a solid platform of suggestions for anyone interested in career success, whatever the chosen profession.

Below is the essence of my response to that recent graduate, reflecting my thoughts for how a compensation practitioner can become a success.  It's not a complete list, the specific applications can sway in the wind along with the reality of personal circumstances, but the concepts are broad enough for individual interpretation.

• Understand your organization:  You need to know at least the basics of the business operations where you work.  What are your products/services and what advantages do they offer a customer or community?   What is the company's reputation, and why? Don't remain stuck in your office/cubicle but get out there and learn about what makes the business tick.
• Understand the compelling facts:  What is the business environment that your organization operates in, and how competitive is your reward program?  What story do the compensation metrics of your organization tell you?   What issues do you face with payroll, turnover, morale, engagement, etc?  Sadly though, all too many practitioners start and stop here.
• Understand your management: Who are these people who run the business and what are their management biases?  Learn the perspectives that each of them brings toward making HR and compensation decisions.  Know these leaders and take every opportunity to ensure that they know you.
• Understand your goals: If you don't know where you're going, or which pathway you're on, then any road will do. So, learn what defines success at your organization and strive to support efforts in that direction.  Make sure that your own objectives are integrated into the larger picture of overall success.
• Mix, stir and bake at 350 degrees until done!  Take all of the knowledge gained from the above, combine it with your own skill sets and experience, a little political deftness and then work diligently at making a difference, every day.

And there you are!  Follow these suggestions in pursuing your chosen career and everything will be fine. 

Bob's your uncle.

Chuck Csizmar CCP is the founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations.  He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant.  Chuck is a broad-based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation.  He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a clowder of cats.

Creative Commons image "Falling down cat," by Celine Q

A Primer on Job Architecture-Implementation

The first part of this article covered the types of organizations that use job architecture and why and the second part is an overview of the project components.

Before we get off the subject of job architecture, I thought it would be useful to include some "footnotes" on things to look out for as you develop implementation plans. It's rare when you can foresee just what will happen during implementation, but these items stand out as lessons learned, sometimes the hard way, by those who are starting off on a job architecture project.

• OMG -- Because there is so much data involved with this type of project, make sure you start with reliable templates for capturing, using, and communicating the data. You don't want to spend unnecessary time transcribing anything, so you need to have a software approach that is accessible by senior management, managers and human resources. Data capture needs to easily transform into reports. You also need to recognize from the outset that you may not be giving employees access to the same content, so you'll need time and resources to design employee access before you rollout the project.
• Senior time management commitment -- I have rarely been involved in a compensation project that demands as much time from senior management as job architecture. Once they realize what they are going to get out of it, they are likely to be willing, but don't make the mistake of sugar-coating it. You need to build a lot of support before you initiate this type of project. Emphasize what their employees will get out of job architecture and how much easier it will make management decision-making.
• Unspoken rivalries -- The leveling process is likely to uncover some strong feelings about issues of job value and leadership like: whose manager is really an entry-level manager vs. mid-level manager vs. senior manager; whose "expert" is more valuable to the company; where entry-level really starts for professionals. If that happens, see next bullet.
• Resolution is inevitable -- Don't be surprised if you hit a period of "itchiness" among your managers. This is common in job architecture projects, and most managers can settle down into the appropriate mindset as soon as they start to admit all the benefits to themselves. Plan to work closely with your senior management team, individually and as a group, and you will make strides (and build a strong perception of HR leadership).
• The (wo)man who knew too much -- Keep in mind that as you work through this project, you will likely become a pointy-headed nerd when it comes to job architecture. You will have learned so much and will have developed deep emotions about its value. Recognize that there are large numbers of people who are nowhere as absorbed by the wonders that are in the offing. I have seen many HR people who are blind to this, and they end up undermining good feelings for the job architecture because they are too wrapped up in it when they talk with others. It's essential to plan how you can influence each set of stakeholders -- see the next bullet.
• Rely on employee skepticism -- You know how great job architecture will be, but employees cannot just automatically buy in. For them, it's the next "flavor of the month" until you show them otherwise. As with every other compensation change, they'll be wondering what you're hiding. You will change their perspective when you show them what's in it for them. You can't expect them to take your word for it. You have to recognize that support will be generated not when you announce the program, but as you roll it out. As the year goes on, employees will become true believers. The effectiveness of the rollout will really influence employee trust -- see the next bullet.
• Talk and walk -- If your communications make the job architecture seem complicated, you will lose your footing with employees and it will be difficult to get it back, even with management support. Do your best to simplify, simplify, simplify, both the explanations and the administration of the program. This is a perfect opportunity to use an employee beta test group to field test your communications -- you don't have to worry about confidentiality, since managers will have been talking about the program during the design phase.

You can see that it is important to have enough time to do the rollout thoughtfully. I have seen people try to rush it, but this time there really is too much information to pull it off at the last minute. You will have done such great work to develop the job architecture that you should put the time into communications so that Compensation can earn the accolades it deserves.

Margaret O'Hanlon brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm is re:Think Consulting. 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 everythingiscommunication.com. She is a member of U.S. Masters Swimming.

A Primer on Job Architecture-Part Two

Job architecture is a hot topic right now, and I have to admit that I am pleased. The outcomes of the design process can make compensation administration, career development and workforce planning so much more effective. Plus, there is an opportunity for each of us to learn so much about the organization's jobs and reward philosophy during the design process, and to improve employee pay satisfaction at the same time.

In the first part of this article, we looked at the types of organizations that use job architecture and why. If you haven't had a chance to participate in a design process, part two is an overview of the project components. You'll see that there can be different approaches to job architecture.

Here are the basic project design building blocks:

A. Job families. Familiar to all of us, this is where you start--by identifying the groupings of jobs that perform similar work. Traditional examples of job families are Finance, Legal, and Human Resources. You might think that complex companies have a long, complicated list of job families, but that may not always be true. Companies that have worked a lot on workforce planning may have simplified their organizational structure to support their work.

B. Job functions. Again, a familiar step--grouping jobs within a job family with similar responsibilities and skills. Healthcare organizations, for example, may have numerous job functions within a job family. Consider all of the types of nursing specialties there might be in a teaching hospital. Simpler examples, though, would be Accounting and Accounts Receivable/Payable under the Finance job family, or Compensation and Benefits under Human Resources.

C. Focus area/philosophy. This step is where you may see variability in an organization's approach to job architecture (and a difference in project schedule).

For some, the next step is to identify job levels. The projects that work in this way often produce a job architecture that emphasizes compensation administration. Their goal for organization-wide alignment is to create shared compensation levels, either as ranges or bands, that illustrate job levels. Those levels, in turn, are used for talking about career stages within a job function.

For others, the next step is to understand and organize career paths. This starts with sorting jobs within a function by categories like executive, manager, professional, support and so on. Then career levels are defined within each category that differentiate the levels of development over a career.

The descriptions for these levels of development can be immensely helpful for communicating career paths to employees. They can also be useful from an administration standpoint, to use as standardized guidelines for transferring employees among various functions within a job family or building consensus on a promotion, for example. (Standardization also helps build a level of employee trust in these transactions.) Salary alignment across the organization is a complex step in this type of design process as it executes and supports the career path framework.

If job architecture is not in your near future, but you'd like to learn more, almost all of the consulting firms are discussing their practices on a regular basis. (It's a hot topic!) Some of them share more than others, but many will help you learn what's current in our field.

If you have the budget, it's particularly important to partner with experienced firms for this work--the projects involve so much data that they can easily get bogged down. For example, you can get all the jobs slotted and then realize you don't know how to do the next step. I once work with a client who brought me all their job levels on little strips in a shopping bag. They had tried to build their architecture on a wall as a group exercise, and had given up after trying a couple of times to make it work. It's never turnkey, but your insights are going to come faster with firms who've done a lot of this work in your industry. And some firms have far better databases than others.

Margaret O'Hanlon brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm is re:Think Consulting. 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 everythingiscommunication.com. She is a member of U.S. Masters Swimming.

A Primer on Job Architecture-Part One

While the tide is turning, there are still a lot of organizations out there without job architecture. A job architecture's goal is organization-wide alignment of all jobs in a company into a structure which may be used to address: workforce planning, job levels, job titling, career movement and pay.  

Small organizations may not need job architecture because many start with one, or just a few, people in a function. Career growth comes through promotion, but the value of the position is not relative to others in as complicated a way as it would be if there were many, disparate jobs. If a function grows and there are a handful of jobs in a department, the organization might design a career ladder for those jobs as a solution.  

But let's look at some examples where job architecture fits like a glove. Small Life Science and Accounting companies, for instance, often use job architecture because most of their jobs are professional, and career movement relative to levels of increasing competency and responsibility has a rigor dictated by their professions. In another example, a company with large numbers of operational and support staff may develop a job architecture to define and communicate career ladders and lateral opportunities. And to name just one rationale for their use of job architecture, complex and global organizations may need to administer many levels of supervision and management.

How can you brush up on job architecture? The best way is to work through the design process--and I hope all of us will have this opportunity at least once in our careers. It is such a great way to learn in detail about the relative contribution that each job makes to our organization, and about the operational value of having the words to describe each job's contribution to employees.

What to do in the meantime? Well, try to sneak a peek at some other organization's job architecture or go to a professional meeting where an example is outlined. The basic components are not foreign to everyday compensation work. The distinction is that, with job architecture, you are working toward organizational alignment so that jobs from all over a company, or country, share a common structure based on standardized guidelines that are used consistently.

One sidebar on that: job architecture may be developed for different purposes and offer different outcomes. The versions that emphasize pay (and slot career growth into pay levels) look and act somewhat differently than the ones that are created specifically to align both pay and career growth. The second part of this article will go over the distinctions.

Margaret O'Hanlon brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm is re:Think Consulting. 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 everythingiscommunication.com. She is a member of U.S. Masters Swimming.

A Smooth Sea . . .

. . . Never made a skillful sailor

I saw this phrase the other day and it really caught my attention.  Folks on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media are always posting cute, profound or commonplace phrases that describe personal motivation, self-discipline or even the meaning of life, and I usually ignore them.   I cannot understand the point of highlighting the obvious. 

But this one gave me pause.

Think about it.  If you want to progress in your career, then you must show those who are higher up than you that you have what it takes.  That you can rise to the occasion, make the tough decisions and by your knowledge, skill and experience get the job done.  And how do you show that?  Fix something, improve a process, change behaviors, save money, make the act of change work for you and your organization.  Have an impact.

Conversely, those who only administer reward programs (sometimes known as treading water) don't do much of that change stuff and are often viewed as having reached a "career plateau," or as others might view it - they've reached a dead end.   Those trapped (or self-selected) in administrator roles are not considered the cream of the profession and rarely will rise to the top. 

Is it time to look in the mirror?

Where Are We Going?

Of course, you must be in the right environment to have the opportunity to shine, to enact those wonderful change agent activities.  And while we would all like to be employed by smooth running operations, the heroes of our success story are those who created all that smoothness and efficiency.  Not those who came after, who benefit from it today by annually pushing the "continue" button.

In a practical sense though, how many smooth-running businesses are out there?  It's a fair statement to make that just about every organization has some program, policy or procedure that isn't working right.  They all have some aspect of their reward programs that might not be broken but could be seriously bent or considered charitably as less than effective.

Not sure of your environment?  Try this.

• Ask questions:  Become the "Curious George" of your organization and learn all there is to know about your current reward programs.  You will need to understand the "why" as well as the "what" and "how."
• Talk to management:  Gain from their perspective as to business conditions, expectations, their comfort level with the status quo and their willingness to accept change.
• Set up metric milestones:  Set up a series of baseline statistics that describe current elements of your reward programs.  From there you can measure progress toward specific goals. And you will also have a graphic story to show management.  Numbers often trump words.

Change for the Sake of Change

On the other hand, have a care that you don't try to force an issue.  I have seen compensation practitioners push hard to inject new policies, procedures and even cultural initiatives where they simply would not work.  Something that they should have known from the start.  We've likely all experienced some form of the "round hole, square peg" scenario - where certain ideas are doomed to fail due to management bias, a deeply entrenched culture, employee demographics or a host of other reasons unique to that organization. 

But some practitioners will still push an aggressive agenda, more for their own betterment (resume enhancement, improving their personal experience, career checkmarks, etc.) than for the improvement of their organization.

I've seen it done. More than once.

So have a care; using your organization as a personal experiment or Petri dish to try out the latest trends can create a problem for you.  And for your organization.

Chuck Csizmar CCP is the founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations.  He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant.  Chuck is a broad-based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation.  He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a clowder of cats.

Creative Commons image "Sailing," by Bruce Tuten

Check Out This Fitness Craze!

Today I thought I would talk about our fitness level. No, I'm not recommending Peloton bikes or NordicTrack Vaults. I am recommending a bit of self assessment, though. We all share this century's pervasive health problem--yes, rumor has it that sitting has taken the place of cigarettes as our most damaging daily practice. But I think we in Human Resources have had a health problem with a longer history.

How many of us actually consider "walking the talk" as a required daily exercise? I'm not saying that we don't work out at all. But how often are do we overlook or bend our own fitness guidelines? I'm just checking in to make sure our playbook actually keeps us healthy.

Just like saying we're working on cardio when we're making yoga our regular go-to, there are a number of areas of our work where there's a mismatch between our intentions and our actions. As a result, our organization draws its own conclusions about how fit we are to lead. Let's take a look at a couple of areas we where we can up the intensity.

Business alignment. It's essential to understand the jobs that we are responsible for. We can't do our most basic work without this understanding. But how many of us can explain how each job contributes to business performance? We certainly know the answer for high contribution jobs, but all jobs deserve that same insight. Articulating this line of sight takes work, but it is almost improper to overlook the impact of swathes of jobs because they are deemed less important (until they aren't).

Compensation philosophy. You're kidding yourself if you think your department doesn't have one. And you're especially self-deluded if you think that everyone in the C-suite shares the same principles as you do. You may not want to create a doctrine, but when you, your colleagues, and managers make decisions, you all need to share the same point of view. As Ann Bares wrote, "Your compensation philosophy isn't what you say. It's what you do. . . What gets recognized and rewarded? What should get recognized and rewarded?" Each design or policy meeting should start with this discussion, unless your department has a formal position to present. Here, especially, it is critical to walk the talk so others can model Human Resources' practices.

Pay transparency. Our roads are paved with so many good intentions. But starting with the basics, do our employees really understand our total compensation offerings yet--so they could explain them accurately? And really, what progress have we made towards sharing pay range structures? Check out this Compensation Cafe article on pay transparency for insight into achieving your goals (not just thinking about them).

Competencies. We all have them on our performance management forms, but do we really understand them yet? We should be asking employees to focus on these select behaviors chosen because they will help differentiate our company's performance from our competitors. But when's the last time you did a strategy refresh on your competency selections? They should be adjusted as your business strategy shifts, replacing those that have become less relevant. Here's a Compensation Cafe article that should help.

Margaret O'Hanlon 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 everythingiscommunication.com.

 

Knowledge Is Influence, Not Power

The adage that knowledge is power does not always work in the business environment.  It’s nice to have but if you’re not already a decision-maker that knowledge of yours likely supports others, not yourself.

On the other hand, compensation practitioners can use knowledge as a component in their influence skills development, in developing their persuasiveness toward advancing their own agenda.

What You Know

During my career, the colleagues I worked with seldom if ever had a strong grasp of their employee population.  Yes, they knew how many were out there, and probably kept an alphabetized list (hopefully current) for pay plan administration, but that knowledge was always more broad than deep.  Could they answer the “How many this, how many that?” question?  Likely not.  Were they able to inject relevant data points into a discussion that might be able to sway group thinking one way or another?  Not so much.  They could go and “find out,” but by then the opportunity to impact the discussion would have passed.

The point is that we as compensation practitioners may be losing an opportunity to become more impactful in our roles when we spend more time looking at the broad horizon than looking right in front of us.  The data is there, we just must make use of it.

What You Should Know

Like a discussion about dashboard metrics, the “what” of your knowledge base can vary among organizations, based on such variables as the business model, current state of business/financial operations, management biases and how effective the current plans are doing.  This last one is opinion, of course.

Even if you work in an organization where change is a bad word, where resistance to altering course can stymie you at every turn, there are some basic data points of your population that, I believe, a compensation practitioner should be conversant with. Because it can help.

• Male vs. Female: How many of each category, their average pay and comparison, and whether they are clustered in (or restricted to) certain jobs.

• Racial demographics: Again, how many in each category, their average pay and comparison, and whether they are clustered in the bottom third of job grades.

• Workforce age: Average age can warn you about generational attitudes, pending retirements and likely impact on your benefit plan costs. It makes a difference whether you have a young or senior workforce, and where pockets of these jobs are.

• Length of service: How long are your employees staying with you, and are certain jobs more likely to leave than others? Are you training certain skills, just to see the employees depart?

• Number of jobs vs. number of employees: Do you have a title inflation problem, and with that an associated upward trend in fixed payroll costs? How many titles are out there and are they all valid – or perhaps you have the same job with several different titles, repeated over and over.

• Avoidable turnover: Avoidable mean you could have done something to retain the employees. So do not count retires, trailing spouses moving out of the area, deaths and disabilities, or even those you have terminated. What jobs did they hold?  How long where they employed?  What is their story? Can you spot any trends?

• Territory coverage by sales force: You do not see this issue covered much, but if your sales turnover is leaving territories uncovered, or other territories are having to double up, there is a problem. Sales will drop in the affected area(s), and relationship building will suffer as well.

• Compa-ratio: The relationship of an employee’s annual base pay to their pay range midpoint. In other words, never mind how competitive you say your pay ranges are, what is your practice? Are you paying competitively, and if not, who is suffering? You will need to identify who is impacted, and whether you see a treatment trend.

• Promotions: Sometimes overlooked, but how many employees get promoted, and what is their average promotional increase? And of course, what groups/jobs tend to be getting promoted – and who is in the dead-end jobs that never see promotions?

Influence Can be Power

Armed with specific information about your employee population (statistics, trends, titles, even employee names) you will be in a much better position to gauge the impact of proposals or new policies/procedures. And better positioned to argue your own point of view.  Because specifics trump generalities every time.  Actual impact data will often carry the day against assumptions, vague promises or “let’s leave things alone.”

And a wonderful thing may happen as well.  Folks, even senior folks might start listening to what you have to say.  Because numbers do not lie, and whoever can use objective specifics to support their position will likely carry the day.  Not every time, but enough times to make the effort well worth your effort.

And maybe, just maybe there is a bit of power in those numbers after all.

Chuck Csizmar CCP is the founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations.  He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant.  Chuck is a broad-based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation.  He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a clowder of cats.

Creative Commons image "Cat-reading-glasses-with-paper," by Floho67