Leadership Excellence

Pay for Performance

The Feds decided to punish the top 25 executives ( soon to be expanded to 100) of banks and related institutions  where TARP money has not been repayed.  The rationale -- excessive bonuses rather than pay for performance.

The Bank of America, among others say their staff will be raided and move on to greener pastures where compensation and stock options are more lucrative.

What is really fascinating here, is that there are quantifiable measures by which these execs get paid.  So often, we determine an employee's performance, along with many of their peers, by completing rating sheets al at once, on a weekend afternoon, with the key criteria being " what did the employee do for us lately"... I challenge you -- look for the data, puruse the documentation, check out your interview notes with co-workers and customers (aha- there usually aren't any).

Yes, the Feds have a difficult balancing act determining a compensation program for Wall Street.  Let's do our part and develop quantifiable performance measurements that can be understood by employers and employees

Position Titles -- To Whom are they Talking?

There are position titles (descriptive labels), and then there are political nameplates (nice words but what do they say?)

Question - Are titles ego driven, organizationally driven, or functionally important? From an HR Management standpoint, titles should usually reflect the primary functions and status of the position. A connection with reality if you will so indulge the author.  A supervisor of warehousing does just that, supervisors the employees and functions of the warehouse. 

Conversely for the sake of discussion, a warehouse coordinator does what? coordinates the warehouse, what is that?

Titles are very touchy where individuals want to be labeled differently than the position they fill portends. For example, an individual may be adverse to the title of secretary, even thought the duties are just that.  They want status or recognition. Issues? well there is the matter of compensation-- is the position rated as a secretary an IT associate or sales coordinator?  Secondly, take a look at internal politics.. Title comparison and title creep are both breeding grounds for internal angst and negative discussions.

Some high ranking executives promulgate the idea that titles don't matter. Of course not, they have theirs. And they are not going to be changed... The sensitivities of the little person may get lost in the conversation