Today’s post is a quick catch-up on my recent Compensation Café posts. Be sure to click through for the full story.
Executives Would Give Up Incentives for a Little Recognition (27th June 2012)
PwC recently published a quite comprehensive report, “Making executive pay work: The Psychology of Incentives”, on the premise that executive compensation practices are flawed as evidenced by the massive increase in executive pay packages as compared to average employees for seemingly little in return. The key findings of the report are quite interesting, especially the design recommendation: “Money is only part of the deal – and recognition matters as much as financial incentives. Pay is as much about fairness and recognition as it is about incentives. Simpler plans can achieve the recognition benefit with less discount to perceived value.”
If I Don’t Get a Bonus, I Don’t Want the Job (14th June 2012)
Many decades ago, compensation was “a day’s pay for a day’s work.” Then in the mid-20th century, benefits including pensions, medical and insurance got added to the mix. Now, things that used to be bonuses, like …erm… bonuses, are part of a “compensation package.” I get it. I understand this. What I don’t understand is when a set “bonus” becomes an expected entitlement.
Do Incentives Actually Cause Failure? (4th June 2012)
New research suggests the idea of an incentive is a good thing, but once employees get that idea in their heads it can, in fact, hurt their performance. There are instances where incentives can be good for a big goal or a long-term project such as hitting annual sales targets. But for day-to-day encouragement of employees, recognition is a better approach.
Your Total Rewards Investment Is a Waste, Unless… (17th May 2012)
Do you have a Total Rewards strategy? Do you communicate your Total Rewards strategy to all employees in a way that gives them a true sense of your organisation’s total investment in them? If you answered “no” to the second question, then by default the real answer to the first question is also “no.” No matter how well defined or constructed your Total Rewards programme is, if your employees don’t know about it in terms that matter to them, then your Total Rewards strategy doesn’t really exist.
Productivity Stretched to the Limit: What Next? (7th May 2012)
During the last several years, employee productivity sky-rocketed as employer actions taken during the recession forced longer hours, more work and therefore, more productivity from the average employee. But that can’t last. At some point employers will have to start hiring again to keep pace with a rebounding (if slowly) economy. And that time is now, according to the latest US productivity numbers. Click through to read about what you can do now.
7 Key Trends in Rewards & Recognition (25th April 2012)
The Incentive Research Foundation recently issued a detailed report that compiles and categorises research from 46 different sources into its “2012 Trends in Rewards & Recognition” report. In this post, I highlighted seven key trends below with excerpts and my own thoughts.
