The world of work is shifting its focus from the organisation to the individual. Those organisations that keep their talent are those that pay as much attention to the employee value proposition as they do to their customer value propositions. They recognise that empowering, guiding and nurturing their employees enables them to improve productivity and performance.

“In the past, engagement with the employee was usually on the enterprise’s terms. Today that dynamic has fundamentally changed and it is the talented employee who is increasingly gaining control of their career and who they may want to work for,” says Lindiwe Sebesho, South African Reward Association (SARA) President. “If organisations want to acquire, engage and retain employees with the skills they need to succeed, they have to create more flexible and empowering people practices that encourage employees to take charge of their own productivity and career growth.”

Marie-Claire Mclachlan, SARA Executive Committee Member, adds: “Lifelong employment following an organisation’s predetermined career path is long gone. A manager is no longer the only person who drives the career of those who work for them. Now, employees are making the choices and they have the power to choose which organisation they want to work for (or with) based on the best opportunities and pathways to growth on offer.” 

The employee thus determines the course of their career and can walk away from the manager and business that doesn’t recognise or support their unique needs. Organisations can benefit from this change by relinquishing control-focused practices and making the tools employees need to make informed decisions about their performance, development and growth easily available.

Addressing the challenges
The biggest challenge in today’s labour market is not only a lack of job opportunities but there is a critical lack of the skills and experience that most organisations require for sustainable success. This is not exclusive to South Africa, a country with marked unemployment issues. Battling to find people with the right skill sets is a global phenomenon. 

“If your business is not paying attention to the unique needs of employees who have the limited skill sets your business needs, you won’t attract, retain and engage the best talent,” says Sebesho. The organisation that wants to fill critical positions and hold on to its top performing talent has to appreciate each and every employee as an individual and provide effective solutions for their engagement and growth.”

Reward professionals can play an important role in an organisation’s efforts to empower its talent. “Developing and implementing flexible reward offerings that include current and future focused development, recognition for great achievements and flexible work arrangements that fit the unique profile and personality of different employees is important,” says Sebesho. “This means reward practices and career paths should be designed to empower employees through choice and variety whilst being compliant with the different labour regulations that apply. Communicating these options and delivering on the promised employee value proposition is critical in ensuring that this value is experienced and optimised to drive employee engagement and productivity.”

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, [email protected], www.atthatpoint.co.za  

For more information on SARA please visit:
Website: www.sara.co.za  
Twitter: @SA_reward
LinkedIn: South African Reward Association
Facebook: SARA – South African Reward Association ​​​​​​​​​

We all know that our country and its economy face enormous challenges at present. As reward professionals, we need to face the fact that these headwinds are creating a highly combustible environment across society and within companies as well. How a company rewards its employees has become one of the flashpoints in this environment—a great risk but also a great opportunity for the reward professional.
 
Get it wrong, and we can fan the flames of resentment into an inferno; get it right, and we can help create a corporate culture based on performance.
 
Let’s just remind ourselves of what these headwinds actually are, and why they make reward policies such a critical corporate issue. Perhaps the most significant is that the economy is now officially not going to grow at all this year, which will greatly exacerbate the already high levels of unemployment. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), South Africa has an unemployment rate of 25.4 percent, the worst of all the countries they list—and I think the figure is actually higher. 
 
This creates a situation of huge inequality in the country, something that creates social instability. The same is true within companies, where the gap between what executives and lower paid employees receive is large and growing. The effect on corporate culture is devastating.
 
The most toxic ingredient of this witches’ brew has to be inflation, which has been eating into the value of everybody’s salaries but, of course, hitting the lowest earners hardest. Our official rate of inflation is 6 percent but that does not reflect the reality of the man in the street—food and transport inflation, two of the biggest items in his or her basket, have been growing much faster. For many people, inflation is much, much higher than 6 percent.
In other words, somebody who has been getting a CPI-linked raise every year is having the actual spending power eroded quite dramatically. In the Internet Age, in which transparency is a standard of governance, the mere fact that the CEO is earning millions in options and bonuses eats like acid into peoples’ minds.
 
Equally important, companies, like nations, need great leaders to be successful. CEOs and other executives carry an enormous burden of responsibility and expectation and the new Companies Act makes them personally liable for any decisions that go wrong. All of these factors mean they can and do command very high rewards.
 
Against this backdrop, it is clear that reward professionals have their work cut out to create a reward structure that properly incentivises everybody in the company—but it’s never been more important to get it right. There are many issues to be considered, but these must be the top five:
 
Improve your business acumen
You need to understand how the business works in order to create the right structure. And, in these times, it has to be done without just spending lots of money.
 
Focus on the long term
Ensure that pay for performance schemes are closely linked to the company’s actual performance—with a focus on the long term. Too often, executives take decisions that have negative long-term consequences in order to meet short-term targets. For example, reducing head count may help meet cost-reduction goals but jeopardise the company’s sustainability.
 
Be on top of the effect of inflation on lower level employees
Get a good fix on the salaries at the bottom of the pay scale, and the effect of inflation on these employees. As noted above, one has to be realistic about what inflation actually is, which means considering what these people spend their money on. Because this is not happening, we are seeing more and more of what I call “in-work poverty”—people whose salaries do not allow them to live decently.
 
Work on a strategy to reduce inequality within the company
As I have argued, inequality is dangerous. Reward professionals should play a leading role in helping to reduce it within the corporate environment.
 
Make sure the optics work
By this I mean that the focus should not be on what is legal, but what makes sense—or looks good—to all stakeholders. One of the key elements here will be to communicate the rationale behind the reward structure and what those who receive high rewards did to improve the company’s performance.

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, [email protected], www.atthatpoint.co.za  

For more information on SARA please visit:
Website: www.sara.co.za  
Twitter: @SA_reward
LinkedIn: South African Reward Association
Facebook: SARA – South African Reward Association ​​​​​​​​

The way an organisation rewards its employees is critical to overall productivity and the success of the business. Reward management must therefore link directly to the changing needs of organisations to ensure that employees are suitably aligned.
 
This is according to Peet Kruger, Executive Committee Member at the South African Reward Association (SARA). “The biggest assets of any business are its people and business needs to keep in mind that the way they reward people has a direct effect on how business goals are achieved.”
 
Total Reward management takes into account more than just base pay; it also looks at what people need to be productive and positive in a fast changing work environment, especially with technology significantly changing the way organisations do business.
 
It is thus critical that Total Reward professionals – those individuals responsible for creating effective Total Reward value propositions for employees – remain on top of industry trends and get advice and support on how to successfully navigate the minefield of challenges faced due to the changing landscape of business. One such way is by attending the annual conference of the South African Reward Association, taking place on 3 and 4 November 2016.
 
“Even though we have easy access to information these days, it is important that reward professionals attend this important industry conference,” say Kruger. “Attending the event and learning about the latest trends and how they are impacting the industry and are being exploited for maximum benefit expands your knowledge base and gives you something valuable to take back and apply to your own work environment”.
 
Delegates can expect to participate in discussions around future trends and changes affecting Total Reward practices from a variety of leading reward practitioners including those considering new ways of approaching performance management.
 
Performance Management – No middle ground
Once seen as a key driver of employee productivity, business leaders are now starting to consider conventional performance management systems as ineffective, too expensive, time-consuming and often demotivating.  In recent times we’ve seen companies such as Telkom, ICASA, SAP, Adobe, Sears, Microsoft and others either drastically revamping their traditional processes and systems or moving towards cutting-edge and integrated performance management systems.
 
“There is a lot of talk around alternatives to key elements of the traditional approach to performance management and one of them is around reviewing the ratings-based system,” says Dr Bussin, Executive Committee Member at SARA and Chairman of 21st Century. “If you get rid of ratings, then the business becomes a rating-less environment. Of course, the line managers may be delighted by the notion of not having to rate their people, but HR is often baffled by the impact of this. There is therefore one very important question that needs answering before everyone jumps onto this ship – how do you create a solution which assesses performance without a ratings-based system and still enables a business to comply with legislation such as South Africa’s Employment Equity Act?”
 
“There still needs to be a way of managing the relationship between the employer and the employee, to direct their efforts towards what the organisation and the individual want to achieve,” agrees Lindiwe Sebesho, SARA president and a panellist at the 2016 SARA Conference.  “Whilst various studies have proven that traditional approaches do not work for many businesses and employee profiles, Reward professionals need to ensure they adopt appropriate approaches from the best practice trends and clearly define the objectives of their performance management practices. Instead of a “one size fits all” approach, is it possible to consider hybrid models that enable flexibility and empower both managers and employees in different types of businesses to optimally contribute towards business success?”
 
Facilitated by Dr Bussin, the panel discussion is set to examine these questions using insight and active engagement to address the issues from every corner. Panellists include John Ludike, an Independent Strategic Talent & HR Consultant, Nhlamu Dlomo, Executive Director: HR and Advisory Partner, KPMG and SARA President Lindiwe Sebesho, who is Head of Performance Management and Recognition at Barclays Africa Group Limited.
 
Prof Robin Snelgar, HOD Industrial and Organisational Psychology, NMMU, will also touch on the question of whether excessive rewards lead to decreased performance.
 
Managing the talent of tomorrow
“New insights from neuroscience on what really drives people and how to create environments in which they can thrive along with the technological tsunami and changing social world are impacting on the role of Total Reward professionals.” explains Marie-Claire McLachlan, Executive Committee Member at SARA and Director of CultureCode.
 
“In this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, with its forever changing landscape, complexity and stress is on the rise. Total Reward professionals need to better understand how to create “brain-friendly” work environments in order to better engage people and enable a ‘toward’ state in which people can  access the parts of the brain which are needed to collaborate, co-operate and tap into creative thinking and problem solving abilities. The question is how – the answers are at the event.”
 
McLachlan will be examining the topic of Rewire for Change and a New World and the impact of change on how people perform and engage with the organisation.
 
For more information on the 2016 South African Reward Association Conference taking place on 3 and 4 November 2016, visit http://bit.ly/SARAConf2016

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, [email protected], www.atthatpoint.co.za  

For more information on SARA please visit:
Website: www.sara.co.za  
Twitter: @SA_reward
LinkedIn: South African Reward Association
Facebook: SARA – South African Reward Association ​​​​​​​