Share the knowledge – September 2012

Like every month, here are some of the best or most relevant Compensation & Benefits, performance management, HR and/or global mobility articles that I came across recently :

• As usual Derek Irvine makes a very good point about incentives and motivation. His post explains how a bad design led to the Olympics badminton scandal, where 3 teams tried to intentionally lose in order to have a better chance at winning the Gold. Surely some good advice for Compensation managers – try to always see things from the employee side when you design your incentive schemes so that you don’t create an opportunity to play the system and display the wrong behaviours and outcomes.
• Here’s a sweet video from CSB (formerly Sonar6 and now part of Cornerstone on Demand) telling the fairytale of employee engagement. Three HR fundamentals to improve employee  engagement…
• Another thought-provoking post from Paul Hebert at i2i. Through an interesting analogy, he advocates for Compensation professionals to review the objectives of their existing programs and see if the need still exists… and cancel or redesign if needed. As I explained in my post on the shelf-life of compensation plans, I fully agree with this approach…
• How to write an effective job description – this article from one of the HR.com blogs will complement my own post on the challenges of writing good JDs.
• 5 tips inspired by marketing on making the communication of employee benefits more attractive to your staff.
• An extremely interesting 6-minute video from the Wall Street Journal for those of us in the Financial Services industry, where the discussion focuses on the impact of the economic situation on investment banks, and the expected reduction in bonuses by at least 30% for 2012. Interesting as we head into budget preparation meetings.
• This post from John Hollon at TLNT explores the results of Towers Watson Global Talent Management and Rewards survey (click to download). Interesting findings of how top employees focus on competitive base pay and job security (not surprising given the state of the economy since late 2007) while employers try to emphasize challenging work and their vision and values. It seems companies are not willing to putin place the programs to retain their top talent while at the same time they fully acknowledge the difficulty to attract and acquire such talent – even in a shalen economy. There are also comments on performance management and how difficult it is to effectively deploy it.
  

For those of you who are interested in GCC and MENA articles, here are some regional pieces

• Thousands face cut in health benefits in Abu Dhabi as the cost of the premium rises by 20%
• A description of the retirement and life insurance scheme targeting expat Indian workers (who make up 65% of the Indian population present in the UAE).
• UAE residents say that their current savings levels are not enough.
• The launch of the first local private pension fund in Bahrain is about to take place. The MENA market is growing as expats are not included in social security systems in the GCC and there is growing awareness about the need for retirement planning (as seen in the previous article).
• Hay Group released its survey results for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Go check the press releases to get an overview of the market situation in these two countries.
• Two related articles from Executive magazine on retirement and social security in Lebanon : The retirement pain and Your social insecurity : the leaking national social security fund. They provide a good insight about the situation of state provisions in the country.
• Well, I know this one is about Asia not GCC but it is an interesting read about the changes in pensions in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and India that I found through Franz Gilbert’s blog

Best of the rest :

A gift for my readers based in Dubai who may be looking for a job, or know a potential candidate. This job ad for a Compensation & Benefits Specialist Middle East for Alcon was posted on September 19 at Emirates 24/7. If you have 3-5 years of HR and C&B experience, it might be of  interest. Good luck and let me know if you got the job !