By Jon Ingham on July 31, 2009
Interesting piece of research out from the CIPD today looking organisational risks associated with pay and reward of employees.
“Despite the media and regulatory spotlight on the dangers posed by bonuses around encouraging poor behaviour and performance, the CIPD survey finds bigger concerns around overall pay budgets failing to deliver improved performance. Money is being wasted because poor communication of pay and reward means budgets are being spent without anyone understanding what they and their teams are being rewarded for.”
Communication, of course, being the thing we blame, when we don’t get what we hoped to achieve – ‘oh, of course, it needed to be better communicated’.
The real problem is much more likely to be that reward systems haven’t actually been effectively designed to generate the behavioural changes or objectives that are desired – many being based upon erroneous assumptions about motivations and behaviours.
The CIPD find the most common areas of concern are:
- Poor communication of reward leading to poor organisational performance
- Inability to adapt reward policies and practices to the changing business environment
- Reward failing to engage employees
- Reward failing to attract key talent
- Ineffective reward strategy causing poor employee relations.
In addition, they report that:
“Worryingly, only a small minority (17%) of respondents believe that their organisation is prepared to meet the reward risks identified in the survey.”
and:
“Far from being a source of competitive advantage, many of our respondents are worried that their organisation’s approach to reward is so unresponsive it could act like an anchor and drag it below the current turbulent economic waters.”
Well, at least the potential fall-out from these problems will be less significant than what we’ve already experienced in our banks. But it still means that we’re not getting the behaviour and performance that we’re after from our employees, and that we’re wasting very large amounts of money in the process.
I have to admit to being slightly dazed by these findings. How organisations can be continuing to waste one of their largest expenditures in the present economic environment is beyond me.
And , come on HR! If you’re organisation isn’t prepared to meet the risks in your reward strategy, do something about it!
Photo credit: david.nikonvscanon
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Posted in Human Resources, Jon Ingham's Strategic HCM (Human Capital Management) | Tagged HCM, hr, human capital management, people management, talent
By Skip Reardon on July 31, 2009
“The greatest strategy in the world is useless – if you cannot execute it.”Here are the seven critical elements of strategy execution:People. Strategy formulation often gathers the “smartest people in the room.” However, it’s not the senior leadership …
Posted in Be Excellent, Management
By Tom Foster on July 31, 2009
From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Question:
I listened with interest at your last Time Span workshop. How come we never heard of Elliott Jaques before? He makes so much management sense, yet he seems to have been a best kept secret.
Response:
Elliott is seldom included in the management literature, yet everything we know about organizations and [...]
Posted in Management, Management Skills Blog
By Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog @ LeadershipNow on July 31, 2009
Without self-awareness leadership becomes just another exercise in ego gratification. Self-awareness allows for self-discipline and control of the ego. Without it the ego runs amok looking after itself and only incidentally in the service of others if the needs of both happen to align.
Self-awareness is the ability to see when an emotion or a perception is influencing your thinking and behavior and, if necessary, do something about it. Gaining control over the state of your mind will pay big dividends in terms of your leadership effectiveness. It is the blind spot of leadership. Being able to step back and see both the positive and negative aspects about yourself, to see how you affect others, and to see how you are behaving in real-time, is critical to your success as a leader.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 offers some good strategies to develop your self-awareness as part of an overall EQ skill development program. Self-awareness is a bigger problem than one might think. The book reports that “only 36 percent of the people tested were able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. This means that two thirds of us are typically controlled by our emotions and are not yet skilled at spotting them and using them to our benefit.”
A proper and healthy self-awareness facilitates an essential other-awareness that is vital to good leadership. You can not manage the behaviors of others without first getting a handle on your own.
Posted in General, Leading Blog
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