In a recent post, compensation consultant Ann Bares questions whether salary ranges, long a staple of compensation programs among America's companies and organizations, are still a useful tool given the relatively slow pace of salary annual growth during the past two...
Managers are commonly ill-equipped to understand the dynamics of their compensation costs, never mind monitor and control them.” I was struck by this statement by Chuck Csizmar in a recent post on the Compensation Cafe blog. Chuck was making a case for companies to focus on the return on investment (ROI) for employee compensation, and he went on to discuss the reasons for and consequences of managers making poor compensation decisions.
I have to agree with Chuck about managers’ abilities in this area as this phenomenon is at the heart of a challenge I have repeatedly faced when working with nonprofit organizations to overhaul and improve their compensation practices. But, rather than ruing the fact that managers lack these skills and looking for ways improve them, I suggest that there is no real need for the vast majority of managers to develop them in the first place.
A recent survey found that 73% of nonprofit organizations have a formal policy to review executive compensation. As a human resources and management consultant to nonprofits, what I found striking about this statistic is that it means 27% of organizations do not have a formal policy.
Question: How do you ask for a raise? Answer: From what I am seeing and hearing, the practical answer is that you don't. Many employers are not even hiring on a full-time basis let alone giving raises. Many have cut bonuses or have made them entirely discretionary. ...
