Employee reward management

Published on January 7, 2019   33 min

Other Talks in the Series: The Art and Practice of First Level Management

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0:00
Hello, this is Professor Stephen Perkins. I'm going to talk to you about employee reward management.
0:09
Management is all about getting things done through other people. It is thus essentially a social enterprise involving an ongoing series of interactions between individuals and groups. Leaders of all organisations, private, public, and third sector are well advised, bear that in mind, when setting the strategic direction of the organisation, getting a lead to the strategic process, and in trying to implement the steps to achieve it managerially. So where does the topic of this lecture, "managing employee reward" fit within this perspective? To answer that question, it's first necessary to work towards a common understanding of the subject field, and to engage with the various ways of approaching it with managers and managing in mind. For me, it's always helpful to begin by thinking through the issues using the following three Cs, triplet: choices, consequences, and contexts. Along with colleagues, I worked this through in detail in our textbook published by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, Reward Management: Alternatives, Consequences, and Contexts. You may wish to have a look at that to complement the coverage of this lecture.
1:32
In short, approaching the social interactions around managing employee reward, there is a range of possible strategies. Choices of how resources are to be applied. For every choice, there are consequences that we can point to informed by evidence from careful research or by adopting a particular form of sense-making, in other words, theory, in fact, usually by combining the two. Just to help locate such choices and consequences to take into account the specific contexts within which the social interactions will be played out. Social institutions, the legal framework in which paid employment is regulated, as well as organisations, such as trade unions and professional bodies, representing the interests of employees, employer associations, and the principles informing corporate governance all play their part in determining the variety of contexts for managing employee reward, along with the character of the employing organisation. Recent start-up through to long-lived cooperation, scaled from small to medium to large, domestically focused and resourced, or ranging across a variety of jurisdictions internationally, and of course, the sector within which its activities are located and whether these activities are stable or subject to change. The list is not exhaustive, but hopefully, illustrates the point. We need also to bear in mind that employees are highly diverse, consequently, with needs and aspirations that will impact on the degree to which individuals working singly and in groups are responsive to what an employer may offer and expect in return from the employment relationship.

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