What is the best way to prepare an employee remuneration offer?

Clarity of what is expected for each job is critical for any incumbent to be successful. The Job Description (JD) provides details on the responsibilities and the priority areas for any given role. Collectively, all JDs within an organisation must encompass what the organisation seeks to achieve. Who decides on the content? The details of a JD are prepared following input from various stakeholders that include the incumbent, line management and other stakeholders that work with the role being described. At Executive level, the Board must ensure that the JDs are in alignment with what the organisation strategy. The responsible departmental manager is empowered to make approvals to new JDs and any changes to JDs from their area. The employee must also contribute and always keep an updated copy. Human Resources provides training and guidelines for JDs to be accurately written and that all the relevant content is included. Audit may conduct checks on compliance across the organisation. Updating JDs By their nature, JDs are “live documents”, which must be edited whenever there are significant changes to the roles covered. The employee and the line manager have a responsibility of agreeing on changes as they become effective, add them to the JD and together sign them off. Both parties must keep an updated version of the JD. In some situations, organisations are forced to update or draft new JDs, these include: ◎ when placing adverts for attracting new applicants to a role ◎ as an audit requirement The accuracy of the content can be queried when a JD is not prepared as a tool to aid employee performance but for other reasons. JDs prepared for recruitment are intended to attract top level candidates which may result in some of the responsibilities being inflated. JDs prepared for audit purposes tend to be minimalistic in nature, to only satisfy the audit requirements. JDs must be kept updated to ensure employees are fully aware of what is expected of them and not updating as a reaction to some external requirement. How accurate is the JD content? The accuracy of a JD is a reflection of the thoroughness of the process followed when writing the JD. Individuals tend to emphasise responsibilities that they enjoy or those that they feel make their roles more important. Overlaps in responsibilities are natural for roles that work together but clarity on what each role does must be documented. For completeness, each JD must be reviewed together with that of its line manager, its direct reports, peer roles and other roles that are in close contact to ensure that overlaps are acceptable and also that nothing has been missed. Primary content from a JD must be obtained from the line manager and the incumbent. Input can also be obtained from other stakeholders that have close contact with the role. The line manager has the responsibility of verifying stakeholders input as this might not be in line with the plans for the role. What should go into a Job Description? The Wright State University states that a JD not only describes the position’s responsibilities, it sets the foundation for recruiting, developing and retaining talent and also sets the stage for optimum work performance by clarifying responsibilities, expected results, and evaluation of performance. Attached below is a JD framework that encompasses all the critical areas that must be included.

Employee Performance Management (EPM) continues to attract debate on whether the time, effort and money invested into the process justifies the outcomes. Opponents of EPM argue that it is difficult to be consistent, especially for larger organisations, where the decision making is delegated to more junior or inexperienced line managers. For most organisations, the main observable impact of EPM is an increase in salary or a higher bonuses. This results in poor appreciation of its wider value of EPM as organisations become fixated on linking performance assessment outcomes to reward. The end-of-year EPM process focusing on performance assessments/ratings, salary increases and bonuses award can take up to 4 months if not managed well. This creates an anxious and unhealthy work environment as employees seek to make "last minute" efforts to influence the EPM outcomes. Successful EPM goes beyond just ratings and reward but creates strong links to other HR practices. i) Employee Engagement A well-managed EPM approach provides employees with clarity of expectations as well as timely feedback on progress being made. This is complimentary to employee engagement in creating a culture in which employees are excited and satisfied with their work. Interesting insights from a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services on 717 Business Leaders showed that: ◎ 75% Strongly agree that engaged employees tend to be higher performers ◎ 69% Strongly agree that it is difficult to improve performance without also improving engagement ii) Talent Management This is about adopting strategies to onboard, retain and deploy talented employees into high impact roles that significantly contribute to organisational success. EPM supports talent management processes for example: ◎ Succession Planning: Provide performance capability justification for succession candidates. ◎ Promotions : Setting minimum performance criteria for employees to qualify for promotion. iii) Managing Underperformance Proactive EPM requires line managers to hold frequent meetings with their employees providing constant feedback and support. Any challenges are hence addressed earlier and employees are supported to achieve success in their roles. Underperformance is managed by creating a distinct plan of measurable objectives to be completed by the employee. Failure of performance improvement under this setting triggers further action which could be, reappointment to a new role, change in responsibilities or exiting from the organisation. iv) Workforce Planning The CIPD UK defines workforce planning as the process of balancing labour supply (skills) against the demand (numbers needed). It includes analysing the current workforce, determining future workforce needs, identifying the gap between the present and the future, and implementing solutions so that an organisation can accomplish its mission, goals, and strategic plan. EPM is critical workforce planning tool as it provides performance data which can be utilised in making key decisions. Examples are: ◎ Redeployment: Moving employees to areas where their competence is stronger. ◎ Terminations: EPM can assist in deciding on redundancies in cases of skills surpluses. ◎ Promotions: Identifying employees who are ready for increased responsibilities. Workforce planning must enable improved organisational performance through better decisions on the future people needs of the organisation. v) Reward and Recognition Employee reward, when mismanaged, can create a culture of mistrust in an organisation. Reward decisions must be clearly understood and handled transparently. Employees need to know what is required of them if they desire to earn more. EPM provides a transparent framework to drive reward and recognition decisions. vi) Personal Growth and Development Progressive EPM incorporates individual growth objectives which are tracked during the performance cycle with feedback and coaching also provided. The key benefit is that employees are not only tracking how they are doing against key work objectives but they also have a view of how they are developing in line with their career goals. Our Thoughts EPM must be viewed from a wider perspective taking into account its impact across all elements of the employees employment journey with the organisation. Successful EPM at individual level is a key ingredient in achieving a collectively high performance culture in the whole organisation. What’s your take, what will make EPM for effective? Kindly share your comments below.