Inject market data to address external compensation inequalities

Ever changing labor market conditions and supply demand fluctuations make sure that organizations don’t design employee compensation strategy in a vacuum. Success of your compensation strategy not only depends on your system’s ability to provide market data analysis during decision-making but also on how well you analyze the external data during your planning phase.

You start this exercise by deciding on the source of market data as per your industry benchmarks. Relying on multiple survey sources for market salary data will be more beneficial than depending on a single source. In case you opt for multiple sources, you need to decide on mathematical techniques you are going to use to combine multiple sources into an easily comparable source to make comparison with the internal data a smooth exercise.

Getting your current job descriptions updated into your internal system is a must have requirement before you proceed any further. While analyzing the survey data, you need to make sure that you are matching your detailed job description with benchmark job descriptions as matching just a job title or a brief summary can result in wastage of money, time and resources. You also need to have a plan in place for the cases where you don’t find job match in benchmark data.

How you utilize survey results after your internal analysis depends on your current or desired market position. Either you can decide to pay as per market dynamics or you can decide to lead the market. It’s very unlikely that you will decide to pay below market standards after putting so much effort in analysis. You can also opt for total compensation offerings to match or lead the market rather than focusing only on base pay.

It’s easier said than done, you need real experts for a detailed market data analysis internally as software in place will not help if you fail to analyze the data correctly.

Seeking feedback on your compensation process

Organizations put a lot of efforts in choosing the people who can award compensation to their workforce. They may even decide to have a different set of people for different type of compensations awards (i.e. Salary allocation or Stock Grant) as per their business needs. But the question is after giving compensation allocation responsibility and various tools to make informed decisions to these people; do you seek their feedback on compensation allocation process in a planned manner?

It is critical to seek feedback from your compensation decision makers as it will:

• Help you to overcome any shortcomings in your existing compensation policy.
• Help you to understand good and not-so-good things about the tools provided for compensation planning.
• Help you to discover how determined your decision makers are to voice their opinion for betterment of your compensation policy.

Every compensation round has a theme or a predefined objective that needs to be fulfilled and it varies with the type of compensation you are dealing with. It’s best to collect feedback and keep it associated with specific compensation round. This association will not only help you to closely analyze context specific feedback but also to take the corrective actions. In case you need collective and only one set of feedback you can always combine compensation round specific feedback into one.

You should decide on feedback questionnaire if you are planning to collect specific feedback and can request people to rate things you want to be rated. However, it will be good to provide some free hand where feedback provider can share feedback not related to questionnaire.

Finally, you need to analyze the collected feedback; work on to resolve the highlighted problems (if possible) and follow-up with feedback providers (if required).  Publishing corrective actions or changes incorporated as a result of this exercise will convey that you value feedback and will motivate people to participate in future. You can expect some real value addition to your compensation strategy by this exercise as you will be working with the people important to your business and compensation process.

The Part-timer’s Dilemma

It struck me as I was talking to a dynamite woman, who has chosen to work part-time. She was looking for something that would be challenging and engaging, but not critical enough that deadlines loomed large on her. She was struggling to find it.

Truth? It does not exist.

If it is not critical, if it is not showstopper important, if things will chug along just fine without it, …  it is probably not engaging enough for someone of her capability and intellect.

What she needs is something engaging, something important, something critical – just in smaller chunks.

We are no longer paid for our time – we are paid for outcomes, and if our outcome is not important, it really does not matter how long or little we worked.

When you go part-time, lean in.

What and where is your concealed talent?

Now that’s an expression for a skeptic!

The global workforce is loaded with concealed talent, resulting in lost value and opportunities for both business and workers.

Why is talent concealed? Two things really:

1. We only see what we are looking for.
2. We aren’t using reputation effectively.

The first causes the problem. The second is why it hasn’t been solved.

Concealed talent brings no reputation. – Desiderius Erasmus 1466/7/9?-1536

Who knew that a famous Renaissance humanist had such insight into two important 21st century concepts: talent and reputation?

The dirty lens of requirements

We can spend a lot of time coming up with job requirements and descriptions that don’t perform either function very well. Worse yet, they cause us to look at people in those roles solely through the lens of those requirements.

Anything else they might be able to add value with is ignored or overlooked most of the time, leading to lost value for the business and lost opportunity for the employee. This other talent is concealed.

“I’m an excellent driver.” – Rain Man

So what’s the answer? How do we make sure we know what concealed talent they have?

Is it self-identified skills? That’s a start, but it comes with its own set of problems, e.g. the “Lake Wobegon Syndrome” where everyone is above average.

Is it endorsements? That’s slightly better in that at least it’s someone else (we hope) saying you are good at something. Recent experience on a certain professional social networking service has led many to conclude that it’s a bit devalued.

What is it that’s missing from endorsements? It’s the validity of the endorsement.

Says who?

The answer is reputation. Sounds simple. But you have to do it right.

Your reputation is built on the perceptions of a wide array of perspectives of people who have worked with you, experienced your work, or heard about it from others. That’s both good and bad because sometimes reputation can be very different from reality.

The trick is to find out whose perspectives and which perceptions lead to more valid endorsements of talent. For instance, it doesn’t count so much if your 24-hour fitness instructor endorses your carbon fiber-based fuselage design skills, but maybe it’s someone well-respected in carbon fiber-based fuselage design (or perhaps just design around carbon-fiber materials or fuselages in general) who does. And your instructor might be better suited to endorse your self-discipline and ability to stay focused on goals.

In other words, those whose reputation is strong in an area are likely to be a more valid judge of talent in that area. So use that. It’s the gift that keeps giving, because those who get high marks by valid judges are themselves likely to be valid judges of others. Furthermore, reputation backlash can put some restraint on gratuitous endorsements. This isn’t earth-shattering news, but it’s not being used enough.

If only we knew what we know…

“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.” – Lew Platt

Find out what your company knows. Use reputation as a tool to discover the concealed talent in your workforce.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

Getting it Right: 100KM, Team of 4 and 48 Hours

It’s about an endeavor undertaken by our team of four people to raise funds for charity and to walk 100KM within 48 hours to meet the challenge set by Oxfam Trailwalker.  This post highlights our journey, the outcome and re-emphasizes some well-known facts.

We started with goal setting; success was the obvious goal so success criteria were defined at the start in consultation with all stakeholders. Key Success Indicators (KSIs) were to raise funds to qualify for the event (i.e. 50K INR) and to complete 100KM walk within 48 hours with all four members. We did identify stretch goals at the initiation phase itself and those were to raise funds of 150K+ INR for charity and to complete 100KM walk within 40 hours with all four members.

Planning for the event went through a progressive elaboration process. As a team, we had to cross nine check points to register the entry and exit of the full team. Being a team building exercise, it was required that the team of four, walk together, supporting each other, fastest member walking with the slowest member of the team and completing the event as a team. As activities (aka check points) were already identified and sequenced, we had estimated duration for each activity to develop time management schedule in accordance with our team goal.

Communication among team members was planned thoroughly. Similarly, we planned how to communicate with stakeholders (family members, well-wishers, friends who donated for the cause etc) before and during the event. We performed SWOT analysis for the risks and prepared risk response strategy accordingly. We planned and conducted procurement as per the team needs for the event.

Finally on the D-Day, we first timers were at the event venue with almost a month of preparation. We started almost 10 minutes late from the starting point for 100KM walk of energy, determination and courage. We arrived at finish point exactly 39 hours and 38 seconds after the event starting time. It might not be an exceptional achievement from an outsider’s point of view but as our team could achieve predefined KSIs; this endeavor was a success for us.

It was a fun-filled memorable walk where confrontation was used as a technique to overcome difference of opinions and group decision-making was practiced for team decisions.

Four takeaway from this endeavor which are also keys for a successful project management are:

• Success criteria must be defined at the beginning in consultation with all stakeholders.
• Communication breeds success. A well-planned communication strategy is vital for project’s success.
• Change is inevitable. You need to foresee challenges, risks and always need to have a change management plan in place.
• Working together works. Remember the best team doesn’t win as often as the team that gets along best.

Make sure you know the second shot

TONY MENDEZ: Can you can teach somebody to be a director in a day?

JOHN CHAMBERS: You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.

- from the movie, “Argo”

Ben Affleck received a Golden Globe for Best Director for “Argo” and was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. It’s a great interview and Affleck comes across as very intelligent and articulate and relates some interesting and funny stories about making Argo and about his career. One of the stories was about his experience as a first time director of “Gone Baby Gone.” Interviewer Terry Gross asked him what it was like as a first time director. Affleck talked about some advice he got from Kevin Costner, who had received an Oscar for directing his first film, “Dances with Wolves”:

AFFLECK: Yeah. I talked to – the one advantage I had is I could talk to other people who have done it. And I remember talking to Kevin Costner and saying, like, what do I do? I’m going to direct a movie. Kevin said: Make sure that on your first day, you know what your second shot is. And I was, like, what you mean? He said, everyone goes there and knows what their first shot is, and they do the first shot, and all of a sudden think: What am I going to do now? He’s, like, make sure you know the second shot, and that’ll get you rolling into, you know, we’re going to do this. We finished that. OK, guys, let’s go over here. And now the crew trusts you.

A director is very often seen as a leader in that people and resources must be guided towards the completion of a project that achieves a vision. Costner’s advice to “make sure you know the second shot” is good advice that is delivered well. As a leader, you need to have some kind of a plan for how you are going to achieve a goal and knowing what you think you will do after the first step is the best sign that you have at least some sort of plan. And as a leader, the people you lead need to see that you have some sort of a plan. The way Costner delivered that advice was also good; he made it concrete and put it in the language of what Affleck was trying to be a leader in – making movies.

So often, you read a book about Leadership and the concepts, like “have a plan”, are stuck in abstraction. You think, “yeah, a plan makes sense.” But then you don’t know how that translates into specific behaviors for your particular situation and you ask, “What does that mean I’m supposed to do?”

If you are a first-time leader or even an experienced leader in a circumstance that you are not familiar with, find that person who has experience and get that concrete advice that describes what behaviors you need to do to demonstrate leadership in this particular situation. If you are offering advice, make sure you give it in concrete terms that the recipient can act upon.

Photo by jinterwas

Metrics for Compensation Allocation

Simon would like to allocate performance bonus to his workforce who got performance rating of 5/5 and 4/5. People who got 5/5 rating will get (X) % of their base salary as performance bonus where as 4/5 will get (X-1) %. He would like to define compensation metric for the same so that he can apply it, with his decided % amounts, on his entire workforce rather than allocating to each one of them. He would also like to share it with his peers or subordinates in case they would like to use same metrics with their own numbers.

Neither the use of organization wide published metrics is new to compensation process nor is the desire of a manager to build his own metrics for distributing compensation. Only question is whether your current (or potential) adopted compensation solution supports it or not.

As a manager, you would always like to create metrics that you can use to allocate compensation to your team as it will facilitate a smooth process and help you in well-informed decision-making. From ages, managers are using off-line tools to flag and store decision attributes which helps them in making compensation as well as other decisions. What they actually need is a system which not only allows them to build their own metrics based on various person related attributes but also allows them to share it with their peers or subordinates. Manager owned metrics supplements the organization wide metrics (aka HR established Metrics) and not really replace them.

Some managers will be happy if system supports basic attributes like performance rating, work location, Job/Grade whereas others may need more specific attributes like years in Job/Grade, compa-ratio and grade ranges. It will be beneficial to have embedded support for all the possible decision attributes as well as custom attributes (an extension to store business specific values) so that managers can build robust metrics for compensation allocations with great ease. It will result in compensation allocation process to reach the next level.

Data vs. Experts: Nine Years On

The war between Big Data and Experts rages on, but is it really as much a fight to the death as people make it out to be? What does it mean for leaders who must choose which to consult when making important decisions?

The most recent battle in the war of course was the Great 2012 Presidential Election, where pundits, posing as “experts”, were soundly defeated and fled the field in the face of incredibly accurate predictions made by data analysts. The most often cited reason: pundits couldn’t look past their own biases to see what the data was indicating even if they had chosen to look at it, which many didn’t. And even if they did look at data, they tended to focus only on the data that fit their preconceptions.

“Actually, fifty-one. I don’t know why I lied just then.”

Nine years ago, “Moneyball” told the story of another battle that took place in the data-rich sport of baseball. It showed again how experts, this time portrayed by major league scouts, were misled by their “conventional wisdom,” while scrappy Jonah Hill quants ran circles around them and picked up real talent at rock bottom prices to win division pennants.

So is the conclusion that experts are doomed to extinction, like some kind of modern dinosaurs, while nimble data analytics outwit them like little proto-mammals? Not so much.

What smart leaders are doing is learning how to combine the strengths of each to make better decisions and to make better predictions.

In his terrific “The Signal and the Noise,” Nate Silver points out that in the aftermath of Moneyball, where one would have assumed the payrolls of scouts to be slashed in MLB teams (at least in the Oakland A’s right? I mean, Brad Pitt tore them apart!) But no, in fact, the number of scouts have generally increased.

We can rebuild them; we have the technology. We can make them better than before.

Why? Because the scouts are able to be even more effective because of the advances made in analyzing data about players, fields, etc. They are working off of a more accurate model of what matters when measuring the potential of a player long before they are brought up from the minors. The amount of data being collected in baseball is mind-boggling. They are close to being able to record all the data from every game using cameras, sensors and what-not so that you could basically re-create and analyze every aspect of the game; every bounce the ball made, every slip of a player’s foot, etc. Big Data for the Big League.

But they know that’s still not enough to know the value each player could bring to a team. Remember, it’s not enough to pay a player for what they did – that’s rearview mirror thinking. You will likely overpay with that kind of thinking over the long term. What you want to be good at is predicting performance and underpaying today for big value down the road (you hope – if it was certain, everybody would be already doing it.)

Silver describes how it’s those hard-to-quantify attributes where scouts will likely put more focus. An example is a player’s “mental toolkit.” Baseball life is rife with slumps of varying degrees and some players can do much better than others to get through them. Sure, maybe one day they’ll stick a band around a rookie’s head and a computer will spit out either, “Loser” or “Hall of Famer”, but that’s a ways off.

“When your enemy’s making mistakes, don’t interrupt him.”

So, what’s the advice on how to combine Data and Experts? It’s basically this: avoid having to trust your gut. Get some solid, objective data analysis (see my previous post) to set the foundation for your decision-making. But, since the data can’t tell you the whole story except in the most generalized, easy-to-be-replicated by your competition way, bring in your experts at that point to fill in the missing intangibles that help you make the right decision or come up with the most likely predictions for scenario planning.

In short, keep your experts from getting too misled by their biases and blind spots and then have them use their experience and imagination (yes, really) to come up with new ways to look at the problem. Data Analysis’s strength is in its rigorous and disciplined pursuit of objective truth; Expertise’s strength is in asking “what might happen if…”

Photo by GANDALF_GREY

It’s not important now as “nothing is at stake”!!!

Attitude of focusing only on things which can save you from the trouble-in-hand and ignoring the rest often results in a bucket full of important activities to be addressed later. When you ignore things till your job or image or commitment or ego is at stake, you often end up creating a mess.

When everything is important nothing really is important. Important, very important, really important, showstopper or using any other prefix in your communication indicates that it’s important but if almost all your communications have these prefixes then it’s time to retrospect as something is fundamentally wrong.

Just saying that “Planning is important and I invest a lot of time in planning” doesn’t work till you really practice it. Make sure that you are not using planning time as a resting time or for anything else. If you are putting less important things on watch list for review, do review it regularly to pick up an activity which has potential to be important.

Be it solving the business bottlenecks, succession planning, preparation for approaching compensation or promotion cycle or anything related to business; being proactive rather than reactive will save your business from risk.

Many things have changed with technological innovations but few things have not. Planning and periodic review of your plan is one such thing that was important, is important and will remain important. Being proactive and looking things ahead of the time is a must have leadership quality to master. Faking that you have this quality may work on few occasions but will surely put you and your business at risk one day.

Take Five

Take Five, by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, is one of those instantly recognizable songs, due in part to its unusual 5/4 time signature. That makes it sound unlike just about every other song you’ve heard. You appreciate its unique qualities, even if at first it might even make you feel funny. Just watch people try to keep time with this song (or any other song off the terrific “Time Out” album.)

Now, just because Brubeck was experimenting, it didn’t mean he threw out all the rules or principles of music. He was just saying, “What if we tried this? What does that do to the rest of what we know about music?” He was always exploring to keep learning.

So it is with talent in the enterprise and what we try to do here at TalentedApps when talking about talent. We try to make it interesting and worth your time to read our posts by introducing new ideas, either of our own devising, or that we’ve found in our search for ways that companies and employees can both gain value from understanding how talent impacts business performance.

We’ve just hit the five year point and we appreciate the continued support of our readers, friends, colleagues, and families. We look forward to the upcoming years working together on our mission to inform and discuss issues around Talent Management in an entertaining and engaging way.

Album cover courtesy of Wikipedia.