THE REWARD PROFESSIONAL
Six steps to being an effective reward professional
Being good with spreadsheets just doesn't cut it anymore. Michael Rose, director of Rewards Consulting offers his tips on six areas that you will need to focus on to deliver effective reward. “In the past, the reward people were the nerds of the HR world, who were comfortable with compa ratios and pivot table, regression analysis and quartiles, but you wouldn’t want a beer with them,” Rose says.
%ADVERT%
He reckons that reward professionals need to work in a different way and requires new skills and behaviours:
1. Take a long-term perspective but with short-term actions. As Rose explains, this is a balancing act and you will need to be flexible and only move in steps that are achievable.
2. Recognise holistic HR. You must work with other specialists such as learning and development and resourcing to maximize value. Rose explains: “Reward professionals need to look outside their specialism to understand the links with other parts of HR. There is always a danger that you see a problem only within the terms of your specialism. But there is rarely a single solution, even if you can define the problem.”
3. Use a consulting approach. To get a sensible solution, you will need a good understanding of the context: the issues, attitudes, aims etc. So ask lots of questions.
4. More emphasis on change management and less on reward design. Whilst getting technical design right is important, reward professionals need to shift the balance to more understanding of change management and communications.
5. Meld the academic with the practical. Make sure you can use relevant academic research to support your argument.
6. Manage external relationships. You need to understand how to manage external advisers to ensure your organisation gets good value.
Want to know more?
Title: The New Reward Professional, by Michael Rose, Rewards Consulting.
Availability: You can read the full article online at http://rewardsconsulting.co.uk/resources/articles/the-new-reward-professional.
Rewards Consulting advises organisations on “how to make their employee reward strategy more effective.” For more information visit http://rewardsconsulting.co.uk.