It’s getting close to the end of the year and many of you are getting ready to write your self-assessment for the year.

Most of us dread this task. 

·        Do I write a little or a lot? What are my peers writing about? How much are they writing?

·        If I don’t document everything, will my manager remember what I contributed?

”Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing. Not career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.” —Audrey Hepburn

I’ve been thinking a lot about empathy lately.

• The war in Gaza and Israel has my attention and so does the Russia Ukraine war.

• There is the conflict in the U.S. government related to filling the House speaker role.

I was talking to a coaching client recently about her upcoming pay negotiation conversation. She was anxious about how it would go, and I was helping her write talking points.

I asked her this…

“What would your VP and her colleagues say about you when you aren’t in the room?”

My client hesitated and then said, “I don’t know. The VP that I report to knows me and my work, but her peers aren’t people I interact with very often.”

Trust is the promise of a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship between two or more people.

People working in high-trust environments were:

·        76% more engaged at work and 50% more productive.

·        Enjoyed their jobs 60% more and were 70% more aligned with their companies’ purpose.

·        Felt 66% closer to their colleagues, with people showing greater empathy towards their peers and depersonalizing them less often.

Trust is built in moments of vulnerability.

Purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.

Why do we provide various types of compensation to employees?

Base Pay

•        Provides security and addresses short-term needs.

Short-Term Incentive

Many of you are doing compensation benchmarking to update your pay grades and base salary ranges for the new year.  And as you do this analysis, you may be wondering what the norms for midpoint progression and range spread are. 

Midpoint Progression: It represents the percentage increase in a salary structure midpoint from one pay grade to the next.

·        Non-exempt staff: 5% to 10%

 "Everything but the kitchen sink" means almost everything.

I have worked with several employers that have an Excel file called the Kitchen Sink Report. It is a file with all the fields that you could possibly need when doing a compensation analysis.

It is usually developed after the Comp/HR team members determine that they are each pulling separate reports from the HR system, and it is more efficient to have one report with every bit of data in it as a starting point. And then each person can make a copy of the Kitchen Sink Report to start their analysis. 

You applied for the job because you would be leading a team and developing the strategy to support the company’s goals. You would be leading the team on their day-to-day work and impactful BIG initiatives in your area of functional expertise.

This job would add to your marketability, and aligns to your strengths. You are excited to deliver company-wide impact and help the company become an industry leader.

The money is great!

I’ve been writing a lot of Compensation Guidelines documents for clients recently.  The document’s audience varies but includes candidates, employees, and managers of employees. And sometimes there are sections that are reserved for HR only or managers of employees only.

It includes the following sections:

·        Compensation Philosophy Statement

·        Guiding Principles

·        Your Total Rewards Consists Of

ONE – Pay PROCESS Transparency

Giving employees more information about how decision makers determine levels of base pay, benefits, pay raises, and incentive pay.

TWO – Pay COMMUNICATION Transparency

The extent to which employers refrain from imposing restrictions on employees’ freedom to discuss pay-related matters.

Many of you in HR or Compensation roles are preparing for the annual compensation planning cycle. This is the time of year when the annual merit budgets are decided and the progress on goals in your bonus plans are reviewed.

The communications you used last year are found in your files and you start your project planning. You touch base with Payroll and the HR Systems group, so they know what to expect when.

And you think about how much involvement managers have in the decision-making process. Do they have discretion on how to spend the merit budget or is it a formula?

When someone asks me what the steps are in the market pricing process, I share the following:

1. Review job descriptions.

2. Research, choose, and purchase compensation survey data.

3. Match employer jobs to survey data based on job responsibilities and not job title. Document decisions and determine job value.

And then typically, if the employer is big enough, the following is done.

Most of us have two places. The first is our home and includes the people we live with. The second is our workplace.  And this is typically where we spend most of our time connecting with others and delivering something our employers value.

The third place is separate from the first two. It is where we socialize and is an anchor of community life. It is a place that facilitates more creative interactions and where you relax in public.  It is where you find familiar faces and connect. You often make new friends or acquaintances here.

What is an example of a third place?

This is what I hear from most employers right now.  “We can’t find good people to fill our jobs and when we do, they aren’t staying.”

And everyone is looking for the secret to fixing this problem.

·        The good people are out there. But maybe your attraction strategy isn’t aligned to where they are.  Where are their eyeballs? Go there.

·        Maybe there aren’t qualified candidates, and you need to redesign the job to attract entry level people and then train them.

I often have recruiters reach out to me asking if I know of someone who would be a good candidate for an open compensation job. I usually share the job opening with my network and wish the recruiter luck.

It is difficult to get great compensation professionals to move from their current job to a new company.

Why? Because once you have created a systemic and successful job architecture, built your personal brand that includes trust and competence, and can influence key stakeholders to positively impact big goals, you just don’t want to move on from that.

My father died last week. He was 90 years old and farmed his entire life.

I have been reflecting on what it means to be a farmer and their impact on all of us. And the memories were bright and fresh as I wrote the following.

Using published salary survey data from sources like ERI, WTW, Mercer, AON Radford, Culpepper, Payfactors, CompAnalyst, Western Management Group, Croner, Pearl Meyer, Empsight, etc. is the norm. 

And because of pay transparency and pay equity laws we also have job posting pay range data from sources like Squirrel and WageScape. Or you can manually track what your competitors for talent are sharing in their job postings.

Some employers have their talent acquisition team keep track of what candidate pay expectations are by open job title and then use that as a reference.

I have been using ChatGPT for a variety of compensation related deliverables.  For example, it has helped me write job descriptions, career level definitions, as well as competency definitions and proficiency levels. 

I have found it is awful for blog and social media posts.  It also didn’t work well when I was trying to write unique communications for a variety of stakeholders.

Most of us will say "good" and then move on in the conversation to another topic.

But I'm willing to bet, you aren't "good" or even "okay."

Many years ago, I had a co-worker ask me in the hallway at work, "How are you?" When I answered honestly with, "Well, my daughter was up all night because she is teething, and my husband is back in the hospital..." the co-worker interrupted me and said, "Just say okay. I don't really care to know the truth. No one does." I was shocked. I was embarassed. And I swallowed the truth and said "okay."

You’re an HR leader talking to the executive team about pay transparency and the need to comply with the laws in the U.S.

There are BIG feelings about the need to post the base pay range on job postings now.

1.      “Our competitors will find out what we are paying.”

2.      “Employees will know if they are paid low in the range. Managers will have to answer a lot of questions.”

3.      “Do we have employees paid below the range minimum?”