Share the knowledge – June 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 : This excellent post from Steve Boese explains why the “hack month” at 37signals, or any other free time given to employees to work on their own ideas…

Mid-year review : the best of Compensation Insider

This post is dedicated to my readers, old and new. In the past 6 months, the number of people reading Compensation Insider has grown from 12-15 per day to about 100 per day. I am very happy and hope to continue to see growth in my readership as I believe in sharing information and points…

Do we need job descriptions ?

I am often asked : “Do we need job descriptions ?” A lot of managers ask for them. Of course, these managers very rarely think of doing it themselves and writing down the description, maybe even with the input of the employees who hold those roles ! Why do these managers expect HR to write…

Case study – refusing to increase base pay further

I have created, over the years, a “swipe file” of C&B situations I have faced and how I reacted to them. The idea is that I keep a copy of the more seminal communication pieces I have written, mostly one-to-one, not the “all employees” emails that we all have to spend from time to time.…

Are you constrained to say bonus is discretionary?

One of my recent posts covered the pros and cons of keeping compensation information confidential. There are positives to each side of the coin, but my view is that we should communicate as much as possible when it comes to Compensation and Benefits rules, entitlements and required contributions. There are too many drawbacks to not…

4 considerations when creating a job title structure

In today’s Reader Question, I will explore the topic of how to create a job title family for your organisation. One of my friends recently had to open a whole new area for the company she works at. For the sake of the post, let’s say her company operates in retail and construction, and it…

Compensation trends for 2012 – and how we communicate them

Although we are now officially in June and getting close to the mid-year mark, I thought I would share this infographic from Payscale. It illustrates compensation trends for 2012. I like it for 2 reasons : obviously because the topic is of relevance for this blog 🙂 because it is an infographic, it is a…