HR Plans for 2016

Still need to do your planning for 2016?  You may interested in reading this white paper I wrote for HRZone and CoreHR:

What are your plans to be more effective in your HR role in 2016?

Focus on these four strategies, based in the reality of the working environment, to become more efficient and effective throughout 2016.

Curated and written by independent workplace expert and commentator Jon Ingham, this piece looks in detail at core things that HR need to focus on in 2016 and provides insight into how to make sure you are doing these things well - like finding the right talent and making it count.

If you're looking to become more effective in 2016 and ensure you're focusing on the right things at the right time, this is a must read.

Don't delay - get up to speed with what's important in 2016 today.

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• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD   
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Speaking at ATD ICE 2016

I'm also going to be speaking at ATD's International Conference and Exposition in Denver in May 2016.

I'll be talking about learning evaluation having become a bit frustrated by some of the other sessions by the Kirkpatricks, Jack Philips and others whilst I I have been following the event on Twitter over the last couple of years.

Last year there was even a session on Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard which completely missed out the opportunity to tailor this tool for the talent development agenda.

It's really not that hard people!

See:

• Learning and Development - Strategy, Evaluation and Analytics
• ATDMENA - Jack Phillips and the ROI of Talent Development in Saudi Arabia

I'm also hoping I'll get a chance to help promote ATD's new Talent Management Handbook.

Do let me know if you're going to be at the event too.

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• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Fleming Gamification in HR & Customer Service Summit

Also just to not that I'll be speaking about gamifying HR at Fleming's Gamification event in Amsterdam on 8 and 9 June.

I'll be helping participants identify for themselves the main opportunities to gamify aspects of their HR (and Customer Services) processes.

If you're interested in ways to make HR more engaging and natural for your employees do come to the event and find out how to do this.

Also see Friday's post on gamification of reward and talent management.

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• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Reward Gamification in Talent Management

One of the other key trends in Reward and broader Talent Management I'd expect to see even more focus on next year is gamification, supporting a broader shift from financial to non financial reward.

Here are some thought on this, also taken from the new Talent Management Handbook published last month by the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and which features a chapter from me on innovating reward (matching the existing transformation in talent development).


Financial to Non-Financial Reward

We know that financial reward tends not to have as much impact as people often suggest so it often make sense to refocus on intrinsic reward by building a compelling environment in which people can become intrinsically motivated.  Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s self determination theory suggests that this requires an emphasis on autonomy, competence and relatedness.  Dan Pink develops these ideas in his popular book, Drive, to suggest a focus on autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Creating an environment which encourages these things is still not going to be easy but it may well be more productive to put time and effort into this than putting more and more money into financial incentives.

To the extent that this is possible, the shift should also emphasize a move away from complexity and towards simplicity by aiming to pay people enough to get reward off the agenda (paying them what they are worth and ideally what is possible rather than just what you can be got away with) and then focusing on other things.

One particular approach which is worth reviewing is gamification which is one of the newest trends in business and HR as this can have high relevance for reward as it can for talent development.

People engage in lots of other activities, including games but also other voluntary activities, for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with reward.  In fact, they are often much more engaged when they are undertaking these activities than when they are at work, even though they are not being paid to undertake them.

Gamification uses the mechanics and components of games which make these activities fun and applies them to aspects of work to make these work activities more compelling too.  The three main three mechanics are points, badges and leaderboards, also called PBL.  Used inappropriately, these game elements can lead to unhealthy competition and dysfunctional behaviours however there are a broad range of game components which can be used.  One of these which is highly relevant to the reward agenda is virtual currencies which can be used to help people measure their progress and achievement against their colleagues, and can be converted into something valuable for them at a later point, providing potentially greater motivation but without the same cost to the employer.  Innovation systems are often based upon this mechanic.

However gamification can also be about meaning, collaboration and many other mechanics which drive intrinsic reward for example allowing people who are successful in an activity to do more of this activity.

One good example of a gamified approach is IGN which uses what it calls viral pay in which a proportion of profit is shared with employees through $1 tokens which can then be distributed throughout the workforce according to the wishes of each employee.  Although distributions are kept secret the company does publish the amount received by the most successful employees, as a way of inspiring other employees.

Also see:

• Pay transparency in talent management
• ATD Talent Management Handbook - pay ratios

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Pay Transparency in Talent Management

I posted towards the end of last month about my issues with today's pay differentials, included in the ATD's new Talent Management Handbook (in which I wrote the chapter about Reward).

However changing differentials isn't the only action that's needed, we also need to be more transparent about the differentials we have.

This is particularly relevant in the UK given recent reporting that the gender pay gap for women in full-time senior employment is now higher now than it was in 2005.

It'll be interesting to see whether the introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting in the UK next year will tackle this and even more importantly whether it will start to increase broader transparency at all.

Here is this section from the Handbook...

Increased Pay Transparency

Most organizations encourage people to keep their reward secret as people tend to judge the worth of other people by focusing on what they can see people doing rather than the real challenges in a job which tend to be more intangible, meaning that pay levels can be hard to justify.  However we are living and working in an world where people are easily able to share information with each other and more importantly, there is a greater expectation that things will be shared.  Given this increasing level of transparency, trying to maintain secrecy around reward or anything else is increasingly unsustainable.

Transparency is also increasing externally as well as internally, particularly with the growing popularity of sites like Glassdoor and increasing amounts of legislation  around external pay reporting.

However the main reason that pay transparency may be needed is that it is difficult to ask people to trust pay systems when they are opaque, particularly when trust is already low, and also when pay is going to be increasingly person rather than job based in future.

In any case, pay transparency tends not to be a major issue in countries where all or some of the salaries are made public.  Also we in the HR / Talent Management function already know and accept people’s salaries and there is no good reason to think we can handle this information but that other people cannot.

One of the businesses promoting pay transparency is Buffer which emphasizes how transparency breeds trust and leads to better teamwork.  Supporting its ‘open salaries’ approach the company has published how it calculates salaries, bonuses and equity payments and also provides the amounts all its staff receive.

Also see:

• Pay transparency - on Glassdoor and in your organisation too

• Gender pay gap in bonuses

• Glassdoor findings on the gender pay gap

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing 
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD   
• Contact me to create more value for your business  
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com