Editor's Note:  It's true that office parties of any type and theme can reveal a lot about the organization and its culture.  Jacque Vilet shares a few enlightening examples in this December Classic! I’ve attended my share of company Christmas parties --- my employers’ and as a... Read More

We seem to love to get granular with incentive plans. So many compensation professionals are tasked with not missing anything, they include darn near everything in their incentive plans. Increase revenue? CHECK! Manage safety? CHECK! Grow new clients? CHECK! Maintain old clients? CHECK! Focus on... Read More

Editor's Note:  Interested in a successful compensation career?  Chuck Csizmar shares some Classic tips! Whenever I come across self-help materials intended to assist Compensation practitioners with their professional growth I often notice an overly large emphasis on the technical side. ... Read More

Editor's Note:  What wisdom can Aristotle offer those of us who endeavor to make merit pay work? In a conversation about pay-for-performance a number of years ago, one of the participants drew a comparison between the challenge of making merit pay work and the classic dilemma the Tragedy of... Read More

Editor's Note: Motivation is a key objective for many of the plans and programs we devise.  But how well do we really understand and work to appreciate the variations and complexities of motivation?  Jim Brennan share some insights and conclusions in this Classic post. No one can motivate... Read More

When talking with leaders about their compensation programs, I will often ask them what they see as the program's biggest strengths and weaknesses.  Often enough, particularly in reference to base salary programs, they will mention the program's flexibility as one of... Read More

Did you hear the one about the compensation professionals who went duck hunting?  They see a duck in the air and both shoot.  The first comp pro's shot is 20 feet wide to the left.  The second comp pro's shot is 20 feet wide to the right.  Two comp pro's give each other high... Read More

Incentives remain one of the most powerful, and yet also one of the most misapplied, management tools out there.  While research has shown that group incentives can deliver significant return on investment, evidence abounds that our incentive design and implementation efforts often misfire or... Read More

As an independent advisor, I have often been called in to help with situations where compensation has become a very emotional and even intractable problem.  Having the opportunity to work with -- and through -- a lot of these situations over the years has taught me a few things. The biggest lesson... Read More

Experimentation, it seems, is on a lot of our minds lately. As one example, check out Mercer's great piece on Cultivating a Lab Mindset.  I agree with the direction of this thinking, that moving compensation (and all HR) programs and practices forward, at the ground level where most of us... Read More