Social recognition for more innovation in talent management and reward

I've got a few more comments to share with you from my chapter on reward in the ATD's new Handbook of Talent Management.

These are on the value of social recognition:

One of the main opportunities for transforming reward in many organizations is likely to be to introduce or reinforce the use of recognition using new social and gamified technologies which help organizations focus recognition upon their strategy or organizational values and help draw all employees into giving recognition.

Social recognition supports the need to move towards non-financial and personalized reward and is the nearest reward oriented equivalent to the shift towards informal and social learning within the talent development space.

Of course people and companies do not need these systems to express appreciation for each other.  For example, Doug Conant sent 30,000 personalised thank you cards to his employees during 10 years as CEO of Campbell Soup Company.  But technology makes it easy for everyone, not just the most dedicated people, to do this and can build a culture where a large proportion of the workforce participate in giving and receiving recognition to each other.

Also see:

• Personalised reward

• Reward gamification

• Pay transparency

• Pay ratios

And you may also be interested in my posts on Workstars' social recognition system:

• Core values - moving from laminated to lived

• The benefits of employee voice at work

• The art and science of workplace communication

• Humanising HR using digital technology

For more information:

• 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

Innovation in Reward through Personalisation / Customisation

One of the other areas of innovative reward strategies I address in the new Talent Management Handbook from the ATD is personalisation / customisation.  Here are a few of my thoughts on this:


Personalised Reward

Whatever the approach to reward an organization wants to use, this will need to be tailored according to different groups within the workforce.  One of the key needs in companies operating across geographies will be to tailor rewards based upon national cultures as well as different legislation (and managing global reward can therefore be just as or even more complex than managing global talent development.)

Organizations may also need to respond to sector based differences.  This applies in particular to differences between the private and public sectors and between sales and everything else - sales performance management and incentivization will always be a special case requiring specific types of reward.

There may also be a need to take account of generational differences.  There is considerable debate about the extent to which employees from generations Y and Z are less materialist ie less interested in pay and more interested in having a job which provides them with meaning and development opportunities.  In my view the greatest shift that any differences have produced is to make employees from all generations feel able to ask for work which is meaningful for them.

In any case, age differences are likely to be more significant than generational ones as pay, as opposed other elements of total reward, is likely to more important to people early on in their careers.  This is likely to counterbalance any increased desire for self actualization within newer generation employees, at least in the short-term.

People working in different roles and employment relationships, for example part-timers and homeworkers, will also have different needs.

In fact, at some point, organizations face so many different factors to take account of that the only way to respond to them effectively is to personalize every person’s reward - at the very least ensuring that this is based upon them as a person rather than just the job they are holding, but ideally by trying to take account of their individual engagement needs as well.  One example of this is Deloitte’s approach to career customization which allows people to dial up or down the demands of their jobs along with their career expectations but also their rewards, depending upon their personal needs and the way these factors change during their careers.

Also see:

• Reward gamification in talent management

• Pay transparency in talent management

• ATD Talent Management Handbook - pay ratios

And for more information:

• 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

Best country in Europe to get a job

And if you are thinking of quitting your job, this research from Glassdoor reviews some of the economic factors which are important in providing good job prospects.  And the video is my interview talking about the research on BBC World (in Europe).

Basically, the research supports Glassdoor's entry into the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as the UK and Ireland with more national url sites so if you're in Switzerland you can go to de.glassdoor.ch or fr.glassdoor.ch, depending on the language you want to use.  But their experience is that even within Europe there are vast differences between countries with high growth and employment (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and those with double digit unemployment and slow economic growth (Greece, Spain and Portugal).

Their review of the various factors relating to and the quantity and quality of employment, centred around unemployment, temporary work and involuntary part-time work suggests that Estonia, Norway, the UK and Austria are the best countries to apply for a new job.

The main finding is that regulated markets do seem to suffer more temporary and part-time work as well as unemployment and an ongoing employment gap (between levels of employment before the global financial crisis and today).  I'd also suggests that Spain's growth today is almost certainly linked to the recent easing of their previously right regulations.

However, I also agree with the report's comments on side effects eg the potential to form a dual labour market with the rise of 'mini jobs' (part-time, temporary contracts).  Or in the UK where we don't have high rates of these, the prevalence of zero hour contracts (see my previous BBC interview on these), self employment and increasingly, completely unregulated roles in the sharing economy.

The key point for me, once again, is designing these types of roles for an organisation's employees and to suit their needs for flexibility, and not just business needs.  And that applies for individuals, businesses, countries and the whole of Europe too.

It's great to have a role which gets me thinking about macro level issues as well as just those operating within companies, and gets me thinking back to some of the economic development projects we did when I worked at one of the government's Training & Enterprise Councils 20+ years ago.

You may also be interested in these posts on a similar agenda.  Firstly, for Glassdoor:

• Zero hour contracts (interview on BBC Breakfast)

• The gender pay gap (interview on BBC Radio 4 Today programme) and Gender pay gap in bonuses (interview on BBC News Channel)

• Pay transparency - on Glassdoor and in your organisation too

• Why men won't ask for Shared Parental Leave (interview on Sky Breakfast)

And for / related to the UK's Commission for Employment and Skills:

• Employment, skills and energy

• Preventative skills planning

• Investors in People VI: Outperformance

For further details or support, get in touch:

• 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

The need for less boring work in 2016

Glassdoor has released some new research looking at the reasons people leave work - with January being a key month for doing so.

The research identified low salaries as the main factor that led people to quit  - not surprisingly given the questions asked the last straws which caused people to leave.  Other factors like relationships with the line manager, and other people, will still be more critical in getting people to start thinking about leaving - at which point levels of reward start to become more of a thing.

But it's also interesting to see factors we think about less frequently - such as the boring nature of a lot of the work people are asked to do - appearing as important tipping point factors too.

These were my comments in Glassdoor's press release:

“Understanding what causes employees to leave a company is beneficial to both the job seeker and the employer. For job seekers, this survey in particular, offers an important reminder to research a company before applying or accepting a job offer to understand what keeps current and even former employees satisfied and what would or did cause them to resign. For employers, understanding reasons for resignation both across the country, at competitors and within your own company can help in evaluating and improving recruiting and retention efforts.”

For more, see the commentary on OnRec.

• 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