At Innecto we have an on-going interest in Rewarding Talent practice. Updating a chapter in ‘The Compensation Handbook’, edited by Lance and Dorothy Berger and due for publication later in the year, gave me the chance to conduct some new research into current practice. Here’s the opening to the chapter:
Rewarding talent in organisations has become a whirling kaleidoscope of different practices, priorities and techniques with some organisations sticking to tried and tested ‘old world’ approaches, and other organisations completely reviewing their approach - even going so far as to say that their business model, rather than being sales-led or finance-led, is now talent-led.
For organisations emerging from a frozen world of recession and downsizing, rewarding talent as a strategic policy has been overlooked, put on the backburner and reduced to a paper exercise. The centre of the Hippocratic oath is ‘do no harm’ and this is a policy that reward professionals should take to heart in the complex world of talent management. Business leaders may think that they are transmitting loud and clear: their purpose, values, objectives, goals, and performance criteria for the business. But actually, many things get in the way of their transmission. My eye was caught by a recent article in Reward magazine (McCoy, 2013) - in which he says - “perhaps reward specialists should be less worthy and more engaged?” - have we become too wedded to our processes without really considering where they cut across, fail to support or actually oppose the message of the leadership of the organisation?
In the UK, consumer financial investments have words of warning attached - ‘past performance is no guide to future performance’ and this is worth reiterating. The last few years have led to a stagnation of talent in some organisations. Unwillingness to consider that future policy should be different to what happened in the recent past means some organisations will get left behind as the world of business warms up. Some companies will still be in the changing rooms tying their trainers when others are out on the pitch scoring goals.
The contrast is stark: In his role as HR Director, over the 12 months since his appointment, Andy Doyle of Worldpay feels he drives real value to the bottom line through attracting, hiring and rewarding marque talent which demonstrably adds to the organisation’s market value as a private equity funded organisation. This contrasts with other interviewees who acknowledged that their rewarding talent strategy “needed to improve”. In other words, they were still in the locker-room.
Where is your organisation in assessing how managing talent needs to change as things heat up in this new, warmer world?
