Most of the time, no.

Many employers provide bonuses to employees that aren’t motivating high performance. Instead, they are a surprise amount of money that isn’t explained. 

There are two categories of bonuses:

I am working with a couple employer clients right now on their promotion process.

Currently, they don’t have a standardized process. And what the managers provide to HR to justify the promotion is not a complete business case.

So, I created “A Disciplined Promotion Process:”

It is that time of year when managers are getting ready to review the performance of their employees.  Most managers must assign a performance rating to each employee, and no one wants to give or get the middle rating. 

It doesn’t matter whether you call it “meets expectations,” “solid performer,” “satisfactory,” or “achieves performance standards.”  Each of these is heard as, “You are average.”

And none of us believe we are average.

I spend much of my day typing.

Typing notes, agendas, compensation communications, emails, summaries of data, etc.

And the result is this.  A keyboard that has the letters worn off.

It is normal to want to limit risk. And yet we can’t fully prevent the potential to be laid off as an employee.

Focus your time and energy on what you can control.

First, ensure your skills and knowledge are up to date and that you are marketable. That means being viewed as qualified for the type of job you want to perform. Invest in yourself. Update your resume and optimize your LinkedIn profile.

We are seeing more and more job postings with salary ranges. 

About 30% to 40% of employers are not complying with new state pay transparency laws. But for employers who have had laws in place since 2021 like Colorado, the compliance rate is closer to 70%.

We are also starting to see more complaints filed and lawsuits if a company does not comply.  Some employers will pay penalties for noncompliance and others will lose in court.

I have said that more times than I can count.

Usually, I have said this about the job in a salary survey that is being chosen as a match for an employer’s job.

The person doing the “apples to oranges” comparison is:

·        Using the survey job title to determine the match instead of the job responsibilities.

I like working with people who get stuff done. Little things. Big things. And the in between things.

Some people are great at describing problems. But they don’t recommend potential solutions.

Others can go into detail about what happened to cause a problem.

We are quickly moving toward the end of the year. Your work-related performance will be evaluated and discussed by your manager, your manager’s peers, and your manager’s boss. 

While some employers have implemented continuous feedback processes, many others continue to use the performance evaluation approach that has been in place for decades.

Let’s shift to your personal life.

You are probably starting to think about and prepare for the holidays that occur during November and December.

When you are looking for a match in a salary survey, sometimes you cannot find one that is an exact match to the employer’s job description. 

Scenario #1: The employer’s job description has responsibilities that are “MORE than” the salary survey job’s description. 

·        Step 1: You look in the salary survey for a higher-level job to use as a match. That higher level job doesn’t exist in the survey or market data isn’t reported because the sample size was too small.

An employee’s journey with an employer starts when they apply for an open job. Ideally, the employer includes the base pay range, incentive information, and a benefits summary.

The interview process doesn’t give the employer a tremendous amount of verifiable data on which to make a new hire pay decision.

The candidate is selling themselves to the employer. The employer is selling themselves to the candidate.  Everyone is on their best behavior and realistically not everything that is shared is true.

I’m curious as to what approach you use when marketing pricing a hybrid job.

By hybrid I mean a job that is not able to be market priced with one job match from a salary survey. Instead, the hybrid job is a combination of 2 – 3 jobs.  For instance:

The hybrid job title is “Data & Chat Support Rep.”

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!