Performance Management is not only for Employee Reward

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.

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the way work is delivered resulting in significant adjustments as organisations adapt to the changing environment. Employees are now demanding more flexibility at work whilst organisations seek to return to pre-pandemic profit levels. A key question is how to competitively price job offers in the new environment? At the core the basic steps of deciding the salary offers remain the same. 1) Obtain Data on Market Salaries It is critical that you are aware of what your competition is paying for similar skills before deciding on what you want to offer. Participation in salary surveys provides this analysis with the information quality improving based on the survey participants. Purchasing off-the-shelf survey reports can provide some guidance but with limited accuracy / reliability. 2) Decide on the Salary Budget A firm budget on how much an organisation spends on employee reward must be put in place and communicated to relevant departments. Awareness must be raised to all decision makers on what is affordable and what is not. Salary increases, recruitment for any vacant position and promotions should be guided by how much money is available to spend for each department. 3) Build Salary Ranges Salary ranges are an effective way of managing employee reward as this easier to align to the organisation budget. The ranges should provide room to make inflation increases, adjustments for experience, and performance related increases without exceeding the budget. For larger and where it is administratively feasible, a number of salary ranges can be built to reflect the different skillset employed by the organisation. This makes the ranges more competitive as they are agile to respond to different market demand for different skills. 4) Individual Expectations For new offers, after deciding the salary range for each job, the next step will be to consider the candidate's expectations. Offers must be priced within the organisation range and any candidates requesting higher amounts should be negotiated to within the limits in order to preserve internal equity. Exceptions should be very minimal and require stricter governance before approval. It is important that no offers should be below the range for suitably qualified candidates even if the candidate has asked for a lower amount. Organisations have a responsibility to ensure transparency and fairness which means that if an employee has under-priced themselves this should be corrected and not taken advantage of. The Pros and Cons of Some of the Benchmarking Approaches The decision on how much to offer employees (new hire or existing) is a balance of 3 factors which work well in combination. We highlight some of the key pros and cons for each of the 3 approaches. Internal Comparisons Pro: This is key to ensure that the role is rewarded in line with existing hierarchy within the organisation and hence results in an offer that is internally consistent. This makes budget control easier. Con: This might miss the fact that salaries for the role could have significantly changed on the market as this might not reflect in the internal hierarchy. There is a risk of making an uncompetitive salary offer. External Benchmarking: Salary Surveys Pro: Salary surveys provide an independent analysis of market pay and hence this will give reliable insight on externally competitive offers. This approach increases the ability to attract new employees. Con: The internal worth of a particular skill may be different from the market perception resulting in a misalignment of what the market pays and how much the organisation wants to pay. Candidate Proposal Pro: A candidate proposal gives a good indication of how the individual values themselves, it provides the level of pay that will make them accept the role. Con: In many cases this tends to be overly inflated as most candidates want to draw as much economic benefit as possible from the employment relationship. Our Thoughts Salary offers must reflect the value that the employer places on a job and should be decided following the guidance of an updated Reward Policy. The market data and the candidate feedback should be used as balancing factors but the primary point should be the value the organisation receives from the role. What’s your take, do you feel there is enough transparency being applied in salary offer decisions? Kindly leave comments below.