One of the fundamental activities of HR is to ensure that competitive base salary ranges and incentives are assigned to jobs.
The range from minimum to maximum provides a boundary within which base pay decisions are made. They tell the hiring manager, employees, and candidates what the employer is willing to pay.
However, I have had several C-suite leaders lately who what to avoid conflict in relation to pay decisions. They want everyone to feel good. They don’t say no when pushed by their direct reports to pay above the pay range assigned to a job that is based on external market data.
They have no real concern for maintaining internal equity and complying with pay equity laws.
They have a short-term focus on not dealing with conflict without regard for the longer term pay transparency and communication challenges they are causing.
They are rewarding their direct reports with yes and are teaching them that pushing beyond the base salary range is okay.
Another example is when senior executives approve exceptions to incentive targets. They say yes to any “ask” from their managers and directors without regard for the impact on internal equity and administrative challenges.
Given the pay equity and transparency requirements in place today, this type of behavior is not going to go unnoticed.
HR/Compensation often recommends to executives an approach that balances the needs of the business and employees. But if a senior executive wants to overrule HR, there is often nothing we can do about it.
For all of you out there fighting for consistency, thank you. Many of us are trying to ensure that pay decisions aren’t favoring one person over another.
But the reality is conflict avoidant executives often lack the skills and confidence to say no. And then HR is left with a mess that never gets cleaned up.
Executives: Do you want everyone to like you, or do you want to be respected? If you want respect, then you have to say no at some point to ridiculous requests for pay exceptions.
#pay #compensation #rewards #hr #humanresources #paytransparency #payequity #fairpay #basepay #salary #incentives