Sitting down to do a budget that's going to have to last a year can feel overwhelming. After all, what if you get it wrong and run out of time and money? Who can see eight months ahead with any kind of accuracy? And where do you start, anyway? You can't create a reliable budget without a... Read More

Editor's Note: Jim Brennan brings us a Classic reality check on pay, the labor market and competitive survey data. Compensation professionals love to cite “the open market,” while being less eager to admit that every market is different. Despite continual references to reliance on the... Read More

Being a company involved in a SPAC is kind of like being a genius 6-year old or an incredibly tall 13-year old. While you are clearly able to do some amazing things, you are not yet fully ready to address all of the challenges of the grown-up world. But, unlike a kid, you don’t get the benefit of... Read More

Editor's Note:  Classic and practical advice from Chuck Csizmar on pricing jobs in countries where data is scarce or simply unavailable. I was asked the other day to market price several positions in Nairobi, Kenya, and Chao, Chile. The client was seeking to open field operations sites and... Read More

An often-heard complaint about an organization's performance appraisal program (PA) is that the employees don't trust their manager to conduct a fair assessment of performance.  That view is also the common response when asked why a company doesn't use a PA or even... Read More

On the plate today: an incentive plan design primer covering the topic of performance gates.   Performance gates (also referred to as "hurdles", "tripwires", "qualifiers" and "knockouts") can play an important role in incentive plan design. When an... Read More

Compensation wisdom and a terrific quote from none other than Maya Angelou! She says: Human beings are more alike than unalike.  Whether in Paris, Texas or Paris, France, we all want to have good jobs where we are needed and respected and paid just a little more than we deserve. I call this... Read More

A recent conversation about management participation in a compensation review brought to mind a client project where we made a big bet on involving managers. I was engaged to conduct a review of the company's compensation and benefits practices.  Managers in one particular division had... Read More

Need more proof that carelessly designed incentives can do more harm than good?  Check out Wikipedia's list of perverse incentives.  Perverse incentives, by definition, are those that produce unintended negative consequences.  A few laughs and some solid food for thought. A couple of my... Read More

The path to value creation, according to many in the private equity sector, is through return on invested capital (ROIC).  Indeed, they tell us, the best way to create real value in a businessis by making smart capital investment decisions. This should interest us, as HR and reward professionals,... Read More