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Archive for December 13th, 2006

Get Your Gun Here

This may be a stretch, but I enjoyed the story too much to ignore it. Since we have had much to say about rewards and motivations today, check out this headline – Buy a House, Get a Glock: Real Estate Agent Offers Guns as Incentive. Now that is a unique incentive indeed. If you read the short article, you will find the Glock is only for police offers who buy a house through the realtor. Still, give her kudos for some creative thinking and marketing.

Are Employees Satisfied with Their Compensation & Benefits?

In Segal Sibson’s 2006 survey of employee satisfaction, employees responded that their overall satisfaction with their benefit plans was droppiong.

Satisfaction with their pay level dropped from 66% in 2000 and 2003 to 55% in 2006. In terms of benefits, I was surprised to see that healthcare benefits didn’t have the largest drop, it did drop to 54% from 60% in 2003, but the largest drop came in retirement benefits, dropping to 42% all the way from 56% in 2003.

An interesting point that Segal Sibson made was that one company in particular had made a huge investment in retiree medical coverage, but very few of the employees (even those nearing retirement) knew about the benefit.

Here are their tips to improve employee perception of your compensation and benefits programs:

Step 1: Inventory rewards. Conduct a full, realistic inventory of your rewards and pay attention to how they compare to the market for talent.

Step 2: Measure investment. Calculate the current level of investment in each rewards element to determine their competitiveness and the return on changes in each investment.

Step 3: Increase information. Explain the full suite of rewards, and measure employees’ level of understanding, satisfaction, engagement and turnover intent.

Step 4: Implement improvements. Make the intended suite of rewards “real” by ensuring that they are implemented and executed with excellence.

Step 5: Measure impact. Assess desired outcomes, such as engagement retention and productivity, and examine the return on investment produced by changes in the rewards package.

If you read their report, you will find much written about what they call the “rewards of work” which are: Affiliation, Compensation, Benefits, Work Content and Career. They rightly mention that these elements and even certain aspects of the elements will be more important than others to an individual.

The one area they don’t address in much detail is how they measure what an employee wants when it comes to rewards of work and how this information could be used in helping reduce employee dissatisfaction. I would encourage the use of objective assessments to measure an employee’s reward structure along with their motivations.

Segal Sibson makes the statement that employees will, within limits, substitute one reward for another. I would agree with this statement in part, but when you look at rewards, how d you know if offering an individual higher pay will reward them? This reward would work if their material possessions reward was intense enough to engage them. But what if their top reward is the opportunity to do meaningful work? Hence the need to assess each employee so that you know the rewards that are most meaningful to them.

There Is No War For Talent?

Toby Dayton has an eye-opening post over at his Diggings blog regarding the shortage of talent in the marketplace today. From his post:

According to a recent poll in Human Resource Executive, when HR executives were asked whether or not the war for talent was under way today, 22% responded No while 17% were not sure.

I didn’t see that poll but it is amazing to me that these HR executives could be so clueless. This analysis from Toby cuts right to the heart of the issue:

The single most important function of HR is to make sure that their company has a constant supply of sufficient human capital to compete in the marketplace. That means retaining talent, developing talent, and attracting talent at all times. To do this successfully, one would absolutely have to be aware of what is happening on a macro level to help guide strategic thinking and weigh appropriate tactical decision-making.

For many companies, it is simply a better strategic option to outsource the hiring process.

Empowering The Sales Team

Sales & Marketing Management has an excellent article out titled Break the Bureaucracy. The gist of the article is the revenue differences between companies that micromanage their team vs. companies that empower their team (especially sales).

First, an intuitive point from the author:

The result of this micromanaging? Young hires felt they got no respect and so returned no loyalty, Swanson remembers. Within 18 months, he and 10 other entry-level analysts had quit.

This point cannot be overstated. The younger generations greatly prefer a more horizontal org chart with less hierarchy. The example in the article describes how this analyst working for a bank (well known for multiple layers of management) had to deal with 3 layers of management monitoring his work. Is it any wonder he left for a new opportunity?

Companies that reported direct monitoring and close supervision, and that did not create a trusting atmosphere, were more likely to have lower average revenue growth, lower profit and higher turnover than companies that facilitated self-management and created an emotionally connected workforce.

“Emotionally connected” is not clearly defined within the article, but I think you get the idea. Empowering managers are going to be in great demand over the next couple of decades. One critical facet of these managers will be their ability to manage a remote team. Telecommuting is rapidly expanding and someday will become a standard practice in most companies. A manager’s ability to coach, motivate and hold people accountable using remote techniques is becoming a needed skill in today’s business world.