Compensation, Rewards, Incentives – What’s the Difference? Next Blogtalkradio Show from Influence Insider

Yeah – it’s been a while since the last episode of Influence Insider on blogtalkradio.  But we had such a great guest in @brianahearn I wanted to be sure we could meet that standard before we went on air again.  And I think we’ve done it.  (If you haven’t listened to the show that featured Brian – do it here – it’s a great discussion on influence.)

Compensation Café Is In the House!

You know them, you love them, and I know you follow them.  It’s Compensation Café and we’ve got them on the show next Wednesday July 7, 2010 at Noon EDT to talk about compensation plan design and how it might overlap with other influence programs such as reward and recognition and other non-cash incentive activities.  

Started by @AnnBares from Compensation Force fame – Compensation Café is a multi-author site featuring (each name will link to their bios on the Compensation Café site): 

Ann Bares, Doug Sayed, Margaret O'Hanlon, Chuck Csizmar, Laura Schroeder, E. James (Jim) Brennan, Stephanie Thomas, Derek Irvine, and Dan Walter

I know we’ll have a Jim, Derek, Dan and Ann on for sure – and fingers crossed, maybe a few more.

Compensation and Rewards

Traditionally, compensation and other “award” programs pretty much lived in their own silos but today – with a bigger focus on the “total rewards package” my spidey-sense says that there is a need for more coordination between these disciplines.  For over 20 years I’ve designed internal incentive and reward programs with nary a thought about compensation structures.  But the last few years have shown me that it is a critical element in the way that we influence behavior with our employees – especially sales folks.

Without proper alignment of these tools we send mixed messages to our audience and that’s a bad thing.  

Tune in and listen to these top-notch minds grabble with the best way to manage the overlap between the hard dollars and cents side of the reward coin and the non-cash reward side.   And follow on twitter at the hashtag:  #insideinfluence

See you Wednesday at Noon, July 7, 2010 as we re-start the Influence Insider engine and give you the best hour of influence discussion on the planet.

Comments

[ScottSchwartz]

Paul & crew--

Great discussion today. Like you, I've also not yet seen the consultant who can truly claim to be equally adept and compensation design and incentive/recognition design, and I think you all covered most of the reasons why we haven't seen him or her so far. Perhaps one day we'll have a course of study that will bring the basics of both disciplines together as a framework for professionals, something like EEA is doing (http://www.enterpriseengagement.org/blog/2010/07/enterprise-engagement-certification-is-moving-forward).

In my experience, if you can get into a company at a the C-level, you'll have a good shot at finding an internal champion who's receptive to the holistic approach, but even then it's a tough road without demonstrable metrics (the spreadsheet mentality that Ann mentioned.) Perhaps a future discussion could delve deeper into the kinds of metrics being used for non-sales employees, even if we can't discuss specific clients.

Also -- Jim (I think it was Jim) mentioned the need for ongoing feedback. I just discovered rypple.com -- a neat site where you can get instant feedback at least from peers if not your supervisor.

Looking forward to the next live discussion!

[Derek Irvine]

Paul, a belated thank you for leading this very interesting and informative conversation. I enjoyed myself and learned a good bit, too.

[Paul Hebert]

Thanks for commenting Scott. I think there are "right-brained" companies and "left-brain" companies - and therefore will have different views of what is important. While as a group on the show I think we all agreed that companies need both - until the executive leadership understands they need both it would be a tough hill to climb.

There are many metrics for non-sales - and I agree that would be a great conversation - consider it in the queue!

Rypple does provide an interesting solution to the immediate feedback - something all readers should check out.

[Paul Hebert]

There is so much companies need to understand about the relationship between employees and the company - I personally think the "whole-mind" approach is the best long-term solution. However, in a short-term world we sometimes want to "just get the one result" now versus "get a lot of results later."

Thanks for your contribution!