The prosperity and equality of the nation’s workforce – alluded to in the recent State of the Nation address by President Ramaphosa – is in large part determined by reward practitioners: professionals that advise companies on how to structure financial and non-financial pay elements to compensate employees for their work.

“Inequality was mentioned at least ten times during the address,” says Dr Mark Bussin, a Master Reward Specialist, Exco member of the South African Reward Association (SARA) and Chairperson of 21st Century. “Reward practitioners must take this seriously in their practices and policies by reporting the wage gap in annual financial statements, and finding ways to close the wage gap in companies.”

Tough calls for private sector reward practitioners
Reward and HR practitioners also need to step up their focus on training and education. Tough calls are necessary on employing more people through internships, and creating entrepreneurs within companies.

Tougher yet will be the decision to release these successful candidates to industry in order to let the larger economy benefit from the initial training and development investment.

Tough calls for public sector reward practitioners
HR and reward practitioners in government will be tasked with cutting costs, cutting pay increases, and managing fruitless and wasteful expenditure across the public sector workforce.

“Reward practitioners need to be steady, well informed and consistent in their approach,” says Bussin. “They also need to stand up to those that resist changes for the greater good, as well as new leaders who want sweeping changes just for the sake of it.”

Tough calls for individual practitioners
HR and reward practitioners furthermore need to be the custodians of women representation as well as youth development in organisations. Bussin advises reward practitioners to follow national policy in all areas including benefits, working conditions and employment practices.

Reward practitioners will also have the added challenge of supporting government and business in creating increased remuneration for 6 million people. The implication of this is that practitioners focus on getting their remuneration governance right and working without any further delay.

“As per our President’s closing words, all reward practitioners have a chance to make a difference right where they are by moving beyond historic practices and being willing to say “send me” to do the tough work where it is necessary.”

ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: Juanita Vorster, 079 523 8374, juanita@thatpoint.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

​RESPONSE BY SOUTH AFRICAN REWARD ASSOCIATION

Executive’s pay has come under scrutiny after a report titled ‘Shareholder Alignment, Company Performance and Executive Pay’ was released by Deloitte earlier this week. Addressing inequality is an important national imperative and we support it wholeheartedly. Unemployment is at unacceptably high levels and as a nation, we need to do everything possible to create jobs. However, it is necessary to contextualise executive pay.
 
When reporting on executive pay increases, it is important to consider one executive at a time. Using this approach, we believe that executive remuneration increases have been on par and in most instances lower than the general workforce. Organisations have adopted this approach in an attempt to close the wage gap. If the Top 100 CEO’s or CFO’s remuneration is considered as a group, the increase in the remuneration will be impacted on by CEO’s and CFO’s who have left and the new ones appointed often at premiums to “buy” them.  This is also true for public service and public office bearers who have over the past several years taken smaller pay increases than lower level workers in order to address the pay gap ratio.
 
The allegation that executive pay is misaligned with performance is not true, even based on the author’s own research.   Total Annual Cash growth and shareholder value growth is in our view closely aligned over the period.  It is not aligned with HEPS growth, but that is due to the economic downturn in the final year which is reflected immediately in HEPS.  What is even more compelling is the Total Remuneration of executives (including LTI’s), which is the most holistic measure of actual pay, has gone up much less than the investment returns.  This allegation is thus wrong even on their own data and may be based on cherry picking measures.
 
Strengthening the link and evidence between organisation, individual executive performance and executive pay is high on the agenda of most Remuneration Committees. When analysing and substantiating this link, several measures of organisational performance can be used. There are different views as to the most appropriate measures, and certain measures are more applicable in certain industries. In the South African Reward Association library, there are several research reports that take on average 8 organisation performance measures and correlate them to CEO contribution and remuneration. Generally, several measures correlate positively and one or two may not correlate. From this, one should not take the one or two that don’t correlate and conclude that there is no correlation between CEO performance, pay and organisation performance. Care needs to be taken to arrive at the correct conclusion between organisation performance and executive pay.
 
We believe that the corporate governance processes in South Africa are, broadly speaking, working well. Arresting the pay gap ratio is something that we all need to work harder at. There are many ways to address this. Education is pivotal to this approach because higher skills leads to more skilled work, better productivity and better pay. Halving CEO pay will not address the problem. With the ever increasing regulatory and governance environment and increasing complexity of running a business, CEO’s are commanding higher salaries. This needs to be carefully balanced with the pay gap ratio. The gap between the unemployed and the lowest level worker is infinite.
 
Unemployment is our biggest problem. Let’s not ignore the wage gap but more importantly make sure whatever we do does not result in more unemployed. Institutional investors also need to come to the party and resist demanding ever higher returns from CEO’s which in turn exacerbate the pay gap ratio. As a Nation, we all need to address this problem collectively, and responsible reporting is also part of this solution.
 
SARA is a professional body aimed at promoting the reward profession and practices. While setting minimum standards for the industry, we award professional status to eligible members in various reward categories and create knowledge-building, sharing and networking opportunities for our members and those operating in our industry. We do this to promote and develop the reward industry and to ensure sound reward management practices and acceptable standards.
 
 As a professional body, we support strong and robust corporate governance, especially when it comes to remuneration. Strong media and shareholder activism goes a long way in supporting better governance and we are in support of both approaches to strengthen current codes of practice for example King IV, Sarbanes Oxley, Basel and Pillar frameworks and stock exchange requirements.
 
ENDS

 
MEDIA CONTACT: Carla Coetzee, 072 112 8347, carla@thatpoint.co.za, 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
​

With South Africa Inc facing strong economic headwinds, both the private and public sectors must take a radical, creative approach to remuneration, says Dr Mark Bussin, Executive Committee Member of the South African Reward Association (SARA) and chairperson for 21st Century.  

“With economic growth officially in the 1 percent range, and closer to 0 percent in reality, employers and labour are going to have to face up to some tough decisions,” Dr Bussin says. “On the one hand, across-the-board increases are simply not sustainable but, on the other, the high performers in the company have to be rewarded and incentivised. In other words, our current way of thinking about wages has to change—and radically. Conditions are going to get tougher, at least for the next few years.”

As a result, reward will have to be more tightly linked to performance in order to ensure that companies receive value and bloated wage bills do not threaten their long-term sustainability. Over the past several years, wage demands have borne no relation either to the company’s health, the economy or workers’ performance. This, Dr Bussin argues, is simply unsustainable. In addition, companies will have to have the freedom to selectively reward the employees who have contributed to their growth or whose skills are particularly in demand. 

At the same time, though, he readily accepts that those who are being paid less than a living wage—creating the unwelcome category of “in-work poverty”—need to be prioritised. However, this legitimate drive to pay workers a fair wage still has to be linked to performance. Achieving this will require an investment in training as well as focused management input. One way to pay for this special category of increases could be for highly paid executives to give up their automatic increases and bonuses. This would also be a powerful tool for building employee engagement and defusing some of the antagonism between management and labour that continues to hamstring commerce. 

The fact that the President and other members of the executive, members of Parliament, members of the provincial legislative, judges and others government leaders agreed not to receive increases in the 2016-17 financial year is a good example that the corporate world has signally failed to follow. 

“Similarly, in the public sector, we cannot go on granting automatic increases on demand. There, too, pay has to be linked to performance. Cutting the huge levels of fruitless and wasteful expenditure could actually be linked to pay-rises in the sector, giving everybody an incentive to curb this abuse,” Dr Bussin argues. 

“In general, all parties—labour, management and shareholders—need to accept that they are in the same boat. If the company, or the country, for that matter, goes down, then everybody goes down with it. Simply put, we all need to do things differently, to think differently. “This will require political will on the part of leaders, but there is no alternative,” he concludes.

ENDS
 
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 082 222 9198, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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 South African Reward Association (SARA) has welcomed President Zuma’s decision to accept the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers’ recommendation that top public officials receive no salary increase this year. Among those that are affected are members of the national executive, members of Parliament, provincial executives and mayors.
 
“The Commission made a bold move in recommending a general wage freeze of South Africa Inc’s top executives, and the President has to be commended for acceding,” says Dr Mark Bussin, Executive Committee Member at SARA, former member of the Commission and Chairperson of 21st Century. “This is a great example of nation-building because it sends a very direct message that those that govern us do not exist in a golden bubble, and that we are all in this together. It also sends a very powerful signal to trade unions and public servants, and will set the tone for the next round of wage negotiations.”
 
Dr Bussin adds that the fact that the President and other top public office bearers have accepted a wage freeze should also be taken very seriously by big business. The massive salaries paid to top executives and the gap between them and the lower ranks of employees has been a source of widespread dissatisfaction both in South Africa and globally.
 
He points out that this is the third time that President Zuma has accepted a pay freeze for himself, but the first time that the freeze has been recommended to cover all the top public office bearers.
 
“The government is leading from the front on this issue, and leaders in both the public and private sectors are now under pressure to follow its lead,” Dr Bussin concludes. “We are a very unequal society, and the fact that the economy is not growing is making this disparity even worse and ratcheting up social tensions. Those who lead the country and society need to exercise restraint, and this is an excellent foundation for rebuilding social trust and cohesion.”
​
ENDS
 
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 082 222 9198, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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

Executive pay is a trigger for many media commentators and shareholder activists, but the truth is that remuneration committees (Remcos) have developed several methodologies for tackling what is a very challenging issue. Three main methodologies are used in South Africa where, in general, remuneration governance is on a par with global standards thanks to widespread adoption of the King Codes of Corporate Governance issued by the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa.
 
Each method has its own strengths and weaknesses, and reward professionals need to understand them thoroughly in order to make the right choices—particularly as the practice of naming the consultant used by the Remco is gaining traction. It is also worth emphasising that these methodologies are not watertight categories, and reward professionals will typically use elements of more than one methodology to arrive at a recommendation.
 
Market benchmarking
This is by far the most commonly used methodology in South Africa, and has the benefit of being easy to understand and of making intuitive sense. As the name implies, its basic principle is to establish what the CEOs of companies of similar size and complexity are being paid, and to use that figure as the basis for negotiation.
 
In this case, size is important because the job description of the CEO of an international bank will look very similar to that of the CEO of a four-store chain of hardware shops; the difficulty and impact of the respective jobs is clearly related to the relative size and influence of the two companies.
 
Various metrics are used to establish company size, but the most common, and most reliable, are turnover or revenue; nett profit before tax; number of employees and annual salary bill.
 
Other criteria are market capitalisation, geographic footprint and assets. Depending on the particular circumstances, there might be a case for including these last mentioned criteria, but with care. For example, the relative size of asset bases can give a very misleading picture of the difficulty of the CEO’s job. Thus, a company that owns a large amount of fixed infrastructure, such as a road or rail network, might be as large or larger than a multinational financial services company in terms of asset base —but running the latter is a much tougher job than the former, and the potential for loss is much higher.
 
This last point leads onto what is the major drawback of this methodology: it is something of a blunt instrument. Company size says a lot about the complexity and difficulty of the CEO’s job, but not everything. It should thus not be used uncritically.
 
Competitor model
This model also uses peer companies as the basis for setting the parameters of the discussion, and thus the first step has to be identifying suitable companies. The benchmarking methodology described above will obviously be helpful in this regard.
 
Having determined the right companies for comparison, this methodology compares the relative performance of the companies. Thus, a company that performs in the top quartile as compared with its competitors will pay its executives more than those of a similar company in a lower quartile of performers.
 
Obviously, company performance varies dramatically, so this methodology is perhaps most useful when used to determine the performance-related (variable) portion of the executive’s compensation package. Following a mixed model, then, benchmarking might be used to set the executive’s basic salary, while the competitor model forms the basis for establishing his or her incentives and share options.
 
Job-Sizing
This methodology is much more complex than the preceding two, and attempts to enable the reward professional to categorise the executive’s job more finely, and correlate it more closely to the rest of the market, using salary survey data. Many consultants have developed their own versions of this approach—this description will thus be as general as possible in order to identify the principles.
 
Based on research and experience, the methodology establishes the key criteria for evaluating executive positions. My own methodology, Execu-Measure, uses company size, the strategic level of the job, its impact, and its complexity and/ or requirement for problem-solving.
 
The process begins with establishing the magnitude of the job using company size. The criteria would typically correspond to the four listed in the benchmarking model above; the Execu-Measure methodology uses one of the following: number of employees, total assets or total equity/ liabilities.
 
The company sizing is the most heavily weighted factor. Once it is established, it is refined using a granular evaluation of the job itself. Execu-Measure uses three main categories, each with several sub-categories:

1. Impact of the job (direct, joint or indirect);
2. Strategic level, or freedom to act. This looks at whether the job is strategic across the whole group or at business-unit/ company level, as well as execution responsibilities; and
3. Freedom to think in the context of freedom to act. Here, the various categories are a freedom that is abstractly defined, broadly defined or well-defined. 

​All of these factors are weighted and values put into a large matrix, so that a particular job’s metrics can be cross-referenced to a single job level. The job levels correlate to those used in the various salary surveys.Thinking carefully through the methodology that is used is critical because the remuneration policy and implementation need to be defensible. It should further be noted that because there are so many factors involved, as well as the need to exercise judgement, that no formula can simply be applied. At the same time, Remcos and reward professionals should be aware that the executives will, of course, be advocating metrics and criteria that would favour higher rewards for themselves. Remuneration policies and strategies need to be robust.
 
The following guiding principles should inform the remuneration strategy and its implementation:

1. Tie pay as directly as possible to performance and value delivered to the company;
2. Use market norms as much as possible, they are a valuable benchmark. However, as noted above, it is necessary to think deeply about what market norms to use in the context of the company’s business; and
3. Impeccable governance is absolutely essential. 

It is always going to be difficult to get remuneration right, and it is unlikely that everybody will be satisfied. But with the right degree of care and thought, the reward professional can craft something that is fair, that can be defended and that, most important of all, supports the company’s strategic goals.

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 082 222 9198, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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 ​​​​​​​​

Media reports are currently questioning the appropriateness, and even legality, of mooted payments to terminate the contracts to two City of Cape Town executives. Details are still sketchy, but it appears that councillors were being asked to consider the payments, which run into millions, in a closed-door session last night. 

“Juicy press stories aside, we need to keep an open mind on the topic until there is greater clarity on what actually is going on,” says Dr Mark Bussin, Executive Committee Member at the South African Reward Association (SARA) and Chairman of 21st Century . “However, there are some important principles that should inform the debate.”

One is that King III makes it clear that it is undesirable to pay out executives accused of misdemeanours or underperformance just to get rid of them. If executives don’t perform to expectation, or are accused of wrongdoing, they should not be paid (paragraphs 161 and 162 under Principle 2.25). Of course, companies frequently make use of this approach to avoid the reputational and legal fallout from a dispute, but it contradicts the principle that executives should be remunerated fairly and responsibly. 

In this case, there is no indication that these particular payments were made to get rid of the executives for these reasons. Rather, according to a report in the Cape Times, the move was being made in pursuance of the City’s Organisation Development and Transformation Plan, which is a legislative requirement. 

“If the two contracts are being terminated simply in order to make way for appointments in line with the Plan; for example, affirmative action appointments, then the motivation for the pay-outs seems understandable and, in the broader scheme of things, the amounts do not look excessive,” says Dr Bussin. “However, this is public money so it is critical that the procedure followed to arrive at the amounts is both fair and transparent—any suggestion of a cover-up, no matter if it’s unwarranted, will give rise to speculation. Hopefully, the mayor will issue a comprehensive statement sooner rather than later.”

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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 ​​​​​​

​By Dr Mark Bussin
Executive Committee Member, South African Reward Association (SARA)

For many, the huge disparities between the rewards assigned to executives and the wages paid to other employees are concrete evidence of a basic unfairness underpinning 21st century capitalism. Global outrage over executive packages that are perceived to be too high was one driver of the Occupy Wall Street and similar movements, and remuneration has become a hot topic at shareholder and board meetings.

Given its past, this issue is one that is particularly toxic in the South African business world. It is an unfortunate legacy of apartheid that whites are over-represented among the ranks of senior corporate leadership. In this context, wage disparities take on a distinctly racial complexion, a fact that political parties and unions have been quick to exploit. Unhappiness about the wage gap between top and bottom earners is helping to create the unstable industrial relations that plague South African industry. 

Those who are worried have a point. In the United States, which has the highest wage gap, the average CEO earns 164.4 times what the median worker earns, according to 2014 research. The same research pegs South Africa at fifth in the world, with CEOs earning 73.1 times as much as the average worker. 

Of course, these ratios increase dramatically when CEO pay is compared with the lowest wages in the company. 

Responding to these concerns, and the negative effect of wage disparity on corporate sustainability, the draft of King IV recommends that boards should “consider and disclose the measures put in place to attain fair and responsible executive remuneration in the context of overall employee remuneration”. 

The key words here are “consider and disclose”, because it is clear that the perception that high wages are immoral can only be countered by communication and education—and here I think those companies that employ a reward professional would be well advised to use him or her. Part of the disconnect between workers and unions on the one hand, and bosses on the other, is that the principles of the company’s remuneration policy are not properly understood. This gap can only be bridged when these principles are effectively communicated in language that everybody can understand. 

Ready for scrutiny?
However, it also has to be recognised that communication and education will only work if the remuneration policies are well-constructed and that there is constant oversight by the board to ascertain that they are, in fact, working as planned. This oversight must come from the board rather than the executive team. The board must also ensure that the company’s remuneration principles and practices are communicated to, and are understood by, all stakeholders. 

It goes without saying that boards will need to heed the comments and concerns expressed by stakeholders, and will have to accept that any weaknesses in their remuneration strategy will become matters of public record. 

One of the challenges they face is that linking pay to performance is extremely tricky to get right, and has led to many unintended consequences. The guiding principle here should be to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved before the executive is rewarded, and that the risk to which an executive exposes the company in pursuit of the outcomes is factored into the remuneration. Integrating the risk profile into the remuneration strategy will require good judgement, and will have to include difficult-to-measure risks such as liquidity risk, reputation risk and cost of capital. Considering the wider context is also important, and the optics of remuneration packages needs to be right too.

Whether or not companies have the services of a reward professional, the following best practices serve as a useful guide: 

Benchmark
When benchmarking, compare executive guaranteed pay to organisations of similar size and complexity. Benchmarking provides a basis for comparison and provides some justification for the remuneration model chosen. 

Link pay to performance 
Executive variable pay should be linked directly to company performance and the executive’s ascertainable contribution to it. The right measures need to be found to ensure that executives are not rewarded for achieving results that, in the long term, could affect sustainability. Incentives for cutting costs could be achieved by reducing R&D or maintenance, with drastic long-term consequences, for example.  

Enhance stakeholder value
It is imperative that stakeholder value is enhanced and remuneration is sustainable. In pursuit of incentives, executives can create projects that deliver once-off results. In today’s world, too, creating value for shareholders is not adequate to secure a company’s social licence to operate. 

Report remuneration in a way that is accessible to all stakeholders
Remuneration is extremely complex; as King IV makes clear, companies have an obligation to disclose their remuneration policy in a way that is understandable by all stakeholders. 

Remuneration goes to the heart of corporate sustainability in all sorts of ways. Getting it right has never been harder—or more vital.

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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 South African Reward Association (SARA) welcomes the decision made by Minister Lynne Brown on suspending the remuneration increases of the Eskom executives. 

“We are all in the same boat and brand South Africa needs to be repaired. This can be achieved via many vehicles, one of which is better labour-management-government relations,” says Dr Mark Bussin, Executive Committee member at SARA. “As much as we welcome labour’s call for a balance between excessive wage demands and job security, we welcome Minister Brown's intervention on pay increases for executives. This is an opportunity for all to contribute to brand SA.”

“We acknowledge executive leadership’s conundrum of retaining and motivating top specialists and staff who achieve their business targets.  When done though, we need to get better at showing the link between these pay increases and bonuses and the contribution made. Strengthening the link between executive and company performance, individual contribution and customer satisfaction and clear communication to stakeholders on these issues will go a long way to better understanding and relationships.”

Audio file caption: Dr Mark Bussin, Executive Committee member at the South African Reward Association, says it is important that communication is stepped up in order to better understand the link between pay and performance. To listen to the audio file, please visit this Dropbox link

ENDS
​
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathlen Fourie, 012 644 2833, cathlen@thatpoint.co.za, 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 ​​​