How to... link reward and talent management
Reward and talent management need to reinforce the same message. Hashi Syedain spoke to a panel of experts about how to achieve this
Date:
25 February 2010
Source:
Guide to reward
Page:
16
Reward and talent management need to reinforce the same message. And yet in many workplaces they exist as separate disciplines that rarely communicate with each other. With a gentle recovery coming into view, this is a great time to set – or emphasise – a joint agenda for the future.
1 Banish silos
Good HR should be about meeting business needs. So reward and talent management professionals need to understand the business strategy, the skills that are needed to deliver it and how they can contribute to it. That means talking to people in the business about their issues, and to each other about how to collaborate effectively and make sure that what they do is complementary rather than contradictory.
2 Get some data
To build a good framework you need data about the current situation and where you want it to be in the future. This includes some level of workforce profiling and employee-engagement data. By mapping out current skills, gaps and future needs, and then measuring the engagement of the people you most want to retain, you will have a good basis for a strong joint strategy. Use the opportunity also to ask about the current compensation and benefits package to see who values what – and what else they might like. Remember that engagement is not only about staff satisfaction but also about advocacy for the business, pride, commitment and alignment to business goals.
3 Be inclusive
There are different ways of classifying talent – but it should cover the whole workforce and include people at all levels: a receptionist who makes staff and visitors feel welcome or a long-serving, skilled and experienced worker in their fifties should have a place in your talent framework as much as the ambitious graduate with three years’ experience. Being inclusive will also help you to tackle the next steps.
4 Show people the way
If reward and talent management are going to work together, pay structures should mirror job architecture. You could, for example, define families of jobs and articulate the competencies you need for each and the level at which someone needs to be operating to progress. Done well, this can be very motivating. It allows a person to see what they need to do to progress to the next pay band, for example, or how they could make a sideways step into a different field.
5 Link reward and performance
The trend towards performance-related pay has been boosted by the recession – when there’s not very much to go round, organisations want to give most to their best performers. But you can’t have meaningful performance-related pay without a proper performance-management system. Performance management, moreover, needs to find a balance between measuring outputs and measuring behaviour, and between individual and team or organisational performance.
6 Pick some quick wins
While you are grappling with the finer details of the above points, see what quick measures you can put in place. Is anything staring you in the face? Are your voluntary benefits skewed towards one demographic when your workforce has changed and another demographic is performing better? Are there flexible or voluntary benefits you could introduce that would reflect this and show you have listened to your most valuable people?
7 Communicate benefits
Good communication is essential to being successful with any reward strategy, especially for progression or performance-related pay (see points four and five) and, equally, if you offer any flexible or voluntary benefits. If people don’t know or understand what’s available to them, and why it might be important, you will have lower take-up and have less opportunity to positively influence engagement. The concept of total reward – making sure that employees understand the full value of everything they are getting, including non-monetary benefits, such as training – continues to gain strength.
8 Be creative
Remember that reward is not all about money and that you can create a good reward strategy with very little expenditure. Salary-sacrifice schemes allow people to spend money on what’s important to them and reduce their tax bills. Discount and voucher schemes can be a cost-effective way of making money go further – and are relatively cheap to introduce. Think also about time benefits – the opportunity to buy or sell extra holidays work flexibly or have access to concierge services.
Being praised or thanked for a job well done is a great motivator for most people – and surely a way you want to reward your best talent.
9 Keep it simple
More is not always more. Sometimes offering too many benefit variations makes most people choose a default option, because they can’t be bothered to work out which precise variation of the medical insurance would be best suited to them, for example. The key is to strike a balance between recognising individual needs and differences and not overwhelming people.
10 Measure and review
The data you collect at the start of the exercise can form the baseline for measuring the performance of a joined-up strategy. You want to be sure that your most valuable employees are also your most satisfied and engaged workers – and to see them engaging well with the reward package by taking advantage of flexible and voluntary benefits. Review progress periodically – and make sure you keep talking to leaders in the business to make sure that the strategy adapts to new business needs.
Panel of experts
- George Farrow, director of service delivery, Asperity Employee Benefits
- Chantal Free, UK head of human capital group, Towers Watson
- Kevin Harrington, director, Sodexo Motivation Solutions
- Sharon Mattingly, consultant, Hewitt Associates
- Matt Waller, chief executive officer, Benefex