Compensation project success depends on many factors. But the top three that I think about are quality, time, and money.
My team is working with an employer to market price about 1,200 jobs within 6 weeks. Crazy, right?! This is the last week, and everyone is tired of doing this tedious work.
The timeline is tight, and the resources (people and processes) have been deployed. But the quality is going to be mid (aka average or mediocre).
We’ve warned the key stakeholders and those using the market pricing data to develop salary ranges. We couldn’t get more time. We couldn’t get more money/resources.
So, we are prepared to double check the quality of the matches after the 6 weeks and make updates as needed. Then we will have to fix the salary ranges and pay grades in the future.
It isn’t ideal but the speed of business these days is fast.
Most compensation leaders know that forcing the process of writing job descriptions, market pricing jobs, and developing the job architecture into a tight timeline is going to cause problems.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you shine a light on the potential problems, the senior leaders pushing for fast don’t adjust the deadline. But then you spend the time later fixing what was messed up.
Sometimes it is tight timelines that cause low quality. Other times it is a reluctance to have difficult conversations with employees or cherry-picking salary surveys with lower pay numbers.
· So, for those of you market pricing jobs without job descriptions – yes, I know that is ridiculous.
· For those of you having to “grandfather” jobs into career levels that are not justified – yes, I know that is going to be problematic later.
· For those of you forced to use salary surveys that aren’t as good as the ones you used last year – yes, the impact of attracting and retaining the right talent is going to be negative. But it will take time for that to happen.
· For those of you who are translating comp nerd speak into human for the manager Comp 101 training session – yes, that is difficult and you’re going to have to use your empathy skills. It takes time to do this translation.
There is no workplace that is perfect. But if you can find one where you can leave it better than you found it, then count your blessings.
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