According to reward consultant Vicky Wright*, sound reward management isn’t just about market pay. It’s about a total employment offer that “attracts and retains the right people and rewards them for achieving a sustainable high-performance organisation”.
There’s an understandable tendency to talk about ‘talent’ in terms of a select group of MBA superstars. But in fact the talent in your organisation could be a group of people – the ‘engine room’ of your organisation – who you nurture and motivate via your reward structure.
By identifying a small number of individuals as ‘talent’ and rewarding them accordingly, you are likely to achieve a highly-engaged minority. However you also run the risk of creating a disengaged majority.
But if you take a wider view, you can develop a talent strategy that will meet the needs of your business into the future. To be sustainable every business needs a talent pipeline – a supply of people you have nurtured and developed, who will be in place to meet demand when you need to replace key staff.
At Reward First, we believe that generating talent internally is a vital part of a sustainable business strategy. And reward practices have an important part to play here. As recent banking scandals have shown, rewarding results and only results may work in the short-term, but if it undermines the values of your business, it will do damage over the longer term.
You can use reward to reinforce behaviour as well as results. And you can develop a talent strategy that takes account of your whole organisation rather than being a fast track for an elite few. That way you will develop a reward pipeline that stands your organisation in good stead now and into the future.
* CIPD members can access Vicky Wright’s piece here
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