HR Pulse - Fall 2007 - (Page 30)

reduced considerably. The main tenet is this: if a leader “changes the rules” and uses discretion, he or she should immediately communicate that, and the reasons for it, to all concerned staff. This involves extra work and extra time. • Managers might feel uncomfortable being asked questions about compensation that they did not have to answer under a less-transparent process. • Employees could focus on compensation as a “lightning rod” issue and keep on pressing questions out of sheer persistence. Taken to an extreme, this could compromise your focus on patient care and quality improvement. These and other concerns provide us with an important learning: assuring that managers completely understand the compensation process is crucial to assuring the program’s success. This becomes even more important when we migrate to a more transparent process. The greatest majority of employees look to their managers for honest, open communication about most aspects of their work, and now they will hold their managers accountable for new transparency in the compensation process.10 What Exactly is a “Transparent Compensation Program?” Each of the elements listed below have been used to varying degrees by organizations. The choice of any or all of these tactics should be carefully examined in light of your own organization’s strategic objectives and culture. They are by no means cumulative, although some are interdependent. Share your Strategy • Describe your organization’s strategic compensation philosophy and objectives. • Your compensation philosophy is explained fully and in writing. • This means, for example, that you are trying to “match the market” or even “be at the 75th percentile of market.11” • Or, conversely, that you have a ranking or placement of jobs within the organization, and maintaining these internal relationships is of greater importance than matching a market average or median for any one job. • Explain how jobs are placed into pay ranges. • One organization even allows inquiring employees to review actual compensation survey results for their own occupation, to see the whole decision-making process as it resulted in the employee’s job being placed into a pay range12. • How do you assure an “apples-toapples” comparison of jobs at this hospital to jobs shown in market surveys? • Publish all base salary ranges. • The range of minimum, midpoint and maximum for all positions open and available to all employees. • Often, grade numbers are used to refer to these ranges. • Explain how the pay range widths were determined. • Every employee knows, or can find out, what range any job fits into. 30 HR Pulse Fall 2007 305023_fina.indd 1 10/27/06 9:57:20 AM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Pulse - Fall 2007

Contents Executive Director’s Letter President’s Message HR Leader Profile: Lisa McDaniel Spotlight on Community Citizenship Culture of Engagement How Transparent Should Healthcare Compensation Be? The Value of Assessment Testing in the Recruitment Process Technology Dramatically Changes FMLA Compliance Creating a Magnetic Culture™ Taking It to the Hill: An Advocacy Update 401(k) / 403(b) Fee Lawsuits – Are You the Next Target? Compensation Offers – A Better Process Find It Again Pulse Points Who, Why and Where Conference Highlights Schedule at a Glance Keynote Speakers Social Events Conference Sponsors Exhibitors Index to Advertisers

HR Pulse - Fall 2007

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