I recently chatted with a friend about his workplace dilemma.
“I’m just so frustrated. I’m training someone for my exact position, and he already complained that I’m ‘too intense.’ I don’t get it. He’s going to make the same amount of money as I will, yet he isn’t willing to put in the work that I do.”
My friend’s concerns did not fall on deaf ears. I hear it all the time, actually. You probably have encountered the same qualms if you’re an employer. The problem, though, is qualifying performance to quantify the reward. It’s become all too easy to look at other companies or marketplace statistics for guidance in compensation. You might be taking the wrong route, though.
In a commission-based compensation structure, it’s easy to identify your top performers. But how do you discover who the salary-based top performers are? There are several avenues to explore.
- Invest in business metrics that provide insight into employees and their return on investments (ROI).
- Incentivize employees by tying performance to ROI and compensate accordingly.
- Rely less on titles when evaluating pay. Titles are often are source of contention — and can be quite misleading if you look to other sources for pay structures.
- Help your productive employees catch up in compensation.
Take the time to compensate your employees according to performance, and you’ll head in the right direction. ‘Best practices’ often override common logic when it comes to pay scales. That combination can be lethal to your employee retention rate and negatively impact employees’ eagerness to see the business succeed. You want motivated employees that look out for your business interests, right? Invest in proper compensation, and you’re investing in your business.
— Maurice Gilbert
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
