How effectively and appropriately an organization defines, measures, manages and rewards performance will have a profound impact on workforce effectiveness. Whether an organization uses the same strategy and programs for all employees is a critical question. Employees playing different roles, trained in different occupations and socialized in different cultures present different needs, wants and expectations. They all … Continue reading Same Strategies For All Employees?

  Effectively managing risk is a critical part of management. Recent disastrous events experienced by private and public sector organizations illustrates the impact unexpected occurrences caused by workforce failures can have on populations, the environment and the economy. Water utilities make people sick; nuclear power plants threaten entire communities; manufacturers produce defective products that can harm … Continue reading Risk Management: Critical Component Of Human Resource Management

Reward strategies drive the cost of one of the biggest controllable costs available to management. The vast majority of organizations want to pay competitively so they can attract and retain the talent they need. But how employees are rewarded can be varied, even if the how much is dictated by competitive pressure and budgetary constraints. And rewards … Continue reading Managing Rewards In Turbulent Environments: Strategies That Work

In order to be effective workforce management strategies need to be a good fit to the context within which they must function. It takes a long time to formulate strategies for staffing, development, performance management and rewards management and to develop the programs to support these strategies. But what happens when the context shifts even … Continue reading Workforce Management Strategies For Turbulent Environments

Assess the readiness for pay for performance compensation of your organization. Are jobs documented accurately and does the documentation reflect current duties, responsibilities and qualifications? Are jobs placed into a grade/classification structure in a manner that reflects internal equity? Are pay ranges assigned to grades that are competitive with prevailing rates in the relevant labor market(s), … Continue reading Pay For Performance Assessment – 10 Questions

Globalization has created challenges related to workforce management. Globalization has created logistical, economic, social  and legal differences across countries that have to be dealt with.  But these differences can often be defined in specific terms and can be weighed when formulating business strategy.  Different beliefs, values and priorities are extraordinarily difficult to define tangibly.  People … Continue reading Managing Culturally Diverse Workforces

As a frequent contributor and reader of WorldatWork and workspan magazine, I recently wrote a Letter to the Editor in response to “new” approaches in performance management that suggest to eliminate the annual performance appraisal process. Let's have a discussion, add your opinion in the comments.  LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The recent discussions in the literature of a … Continue reading Annual Appraisals in Performance Management, a Letter to the Editor

Organizations brand their products to succeed economically. But few effectively brand themselves as employers. Yet, performance is dependent on having a competent and dedicated workforce motivated to make the organization successful. Attraction and retention of high performing people with critical skills that are in short supply is one of the biggest challenges to building the … Continue reading Branding the Organization