When making pay decisions, few executives appreciate the long-term impact their pay decisions have on the organization.  Many times over the years, we’ve bumped into organizations with some strange or unfortunate pay practices in their history.  Employees who weren’t even working for the organization at the time tell hair-raising stories of pay reductions, lay-offs, or [...]

Merit increase budgets have been at all time lows recently.  The general consensus is that merit increases budgets will remain fairly flat for the foreseeable future.  One way to think of this is “3% is the new 4%”.  To be effective managing pay, we need to come up with some new pay models.  Here are [...]

When money is tight, recognition programs are a great way to stretch your budget and keep employees engaged and focused on key results.  When managers feel especially crunched for time, recognition programs can drop into the background and become underutilized.  However, this is the most important time to emphasize these programs. In a survey by [...]

As previously predicted, as the economy improves, more employees are looking to move onto new jobs.  Additional work pressures and stagnant wages are increasing dissatisfaction with jobs and employers.  Higher turnover and decreased productivity are consequences of this dissatisfaction. Based on a recent survey by Mercer, 33% of US employees are actively looking for work.  [...]