Here are three basics of our work.
1. Everything we do in compensation is communications.
2. Change management should be the foundation of 90% of compensation communications.
Why is change such a big part of it?
3. Most of the time, when we need to communicate it's because we're asking people to break old, out-of-date habits and replace them with new habits.
New business goals coming up next year? Employees need to change their priorities and the work habits they've formed to achieve them.
New incentive coming up next year? Performance measures are changing, that means employees' current behaviors/habits need to be readjusted, or even rejected, for the new goals to be met or exceeded.
New salary structure being implemented? Odds are that employees' perceptions of the meaning of competitive pay needs to be adjusted, let alone their level of trust in senior management and their own manager, too.
Whether you're developing an implementation plan or a communication plan, it's crucial to start by defining the habits, understanding and attitudes that exist now and will just be plain wrong when you move into your new plan or new compensation year.
The thing is, we never start this way. Instead we look at what's coming up and plan for that, as if all our great ideas will just replace the old ones when they are announced. No wonder there can be so much frustration about the effectiveness of compensation communications.
The real place to start is identifying what people are doing, thinking and feeling now and what they should be doing, thinking and feeling if the compensation communications are effective. Then telling the truth about how hard it is going to be to change those existing habits (we all have stories about how hard habits are to break). Plans to accomplish the changes you need to achieve get added to the traditional compensation communication plan.
When you look at the old habits and analyze how much they vary across the organization, you might decide that change will follow naturally from what you're announcing. That would be great, but be sure you're not being overly optimistic. And if you recognize that you will need to change out-of-date, "bad" habits, acknowledge that it will take work to get there.
I've written before about the value of the book, "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg. Here's a short video that should make you a believer, too.
Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. A former Board member for the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA), Margaret coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.
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