16 May 2024
How you compensate your people is one of the most important strategic decisions you will make. It can give you a significant advantage over the competition, support or hinder the culture of the business, and drive (or not) the behaviours you need to scale your organisation. And since it is likely one of the largest expenses, if not the largest, fuelling your business, it requires thoughtful consideration. Yet, like pricing, many of the compensation schemes we've seen are WAGs - wild-ankle-guesses - at best.
Compensation from Verne Harnish is a creative book on the goal of “Getting compensation right and out of sight”.
It considers five principles to incentivise the right employees’ behaviours that drive results, serve the firm´s strategy, and reinforce its culture.
I found it different in many ways from other HR books. It has good ideas and examples to understand human psychology and how to use it pragmatically to help it grow a business, removing pay as a distracter. The idea is to use pay, benefits, and incentives to align worker behaviours with the business values and culture.