by Chuck Csizmar - May 15, 2010
If you're addressing your company's single largest expense, the employee pay programs, the pictures become charts & graphs that illustrate the points being made.
Pictures capture attention and build memories much better than text or even the spoken word. Show a picture and the image is locked in, while reliance only on text is a risk. The drone of dry prose can grow boring and is liable to lose the attention of all but your strongest supporters.
Attention grabbers that work: 1) speedometer style formats that graphically indicate the current situation against the target; 2) the green light, yellow light, red light approach, again to colorfully paint a picture that stays in the mind; and 3) pie charts, tables, even regressed lines that tell a story.
People remember images because they capture the imagination. They have a harder time recalling (and taking to heart) what you have said or what you wrote. So concentrate on your supportive imagery.
Make the story a short one. I once worked for a CEO who thought any proposal could be reduced to a single piece of paper, with plenty of white. "If you need more than that," he would say, "it's not such a grand idea."
You Need a Plan
However, before you settle on the visual format best suited to sell your case you should focus on the data points necessary to make that case. Remember the old adage that a dream without a plan is only a fantasy? If you don't take action steps to convert ideas to reality, what is left is smoke & mirrors - with no results to show for your efforts.
For those of you who have ever been on a diet, you treat it like a project plan, right? Experts advise that participants write down everything they eat, have goals to strive for and milestones to gauge progress. It helps to have a plan and to keep score - to know where you stand and where you're headed.
To accomplish this you should create quantifiable metrics that will collectively illustrate the well-being of your compensation program(s) - and then establish baselines (current state) and targets for each performance indicator. This key step will help you understand whether your costs are being contained and whether the ROI on employee rewards is at the level your company requires.
Commonly used HR metrics:
- Average salary / wage.
- Compa-ratios (comparison of pay to a range midpoint).
- Count of employees per segment (hourly, non-exempt, professional, management).
- Average performance ratings.
- Average annual pay rise for each performance rating.
- Count and average promotional and "equity" increases.
- Voluntary turnover (employees who decided to leave).
- Average employee age and length of service.
To make these metrics work for you, to avoid a series of make-work arithmetic exercises that achieve nothing more than capture minutiae, be certain to measure what is important to your business - not simply what data you can capture. Make sure the importance of the metric is clear to management (or can be made so). Management needs to grasp the importance of success, to understand why the metric is important and what achievement would mean.
Once you have the right metrics established (collectively called the "dashboard") and a baseline in place, you will readily see where the problems lie. Then set specific targets going forward to improve these weak areas, creating periodic milestones to mark your progress.
What to Look For
Every organization has different pressure points. However, if your metrics data indicates any of the following situations, management should be informed.
- Average performance ratings that exceed how the business was rated.
- A workforce where key segments are approaching retirement age.
- Promotion and "equity" increase activity that overwhelms the merit budget.
- Low compa-ratios that indicate you are not paying your salary ranges.
- Any figure that is an unpleasant surprise.
Courtesy of CMC Compensation Group
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