Reward Design
Reward Manifesto: Achieving Clarity and Focus in Turbulent Times
Recent years have seen increasing demands placed on companies from investors, customers, and employees. Along with the rise of concepts like Corporate Purpose and Stakeholder Value, the Covid pandemic has compounded the pressure on companies to ‘do the right thing’. The risk of reputational damage from doing or saying the wrong thing will only increase over the coming years as cost-of-living pressures dominate headlines, and as huge environmental challenges hit living standards, company profits, and government budgets.
Reputational risk at corporate level is now firmly on the Reward professional’s agenda. Even where reward might not be the direct source of the reputational risk, it may often become an easy target of attention when other things are perceived to be wrong. PARC has adopted the term ‘Reward Manifesto‘ to create focus on those reward related topics where an organisation is most exposed to reputational risk.
PARC has identified what we consider to be the critical topic areas where a company needs to develop a considered position – outlining where it stands, and, as appropriate, what it will and will not tolerate. This concept of a ‘Manifesto’ (from the Latin word for ‘clarity’) has been developed in conjunction with expert advice from a wide and representative set of those engaged in all aspects of Reward Strategy. This includes experienced Board and RemCo Chair Alan Giles, leading economic commentator Duncan Weldon, and PARC member Neil Morrison of Severn Trent, who will each bring their insight to the meeting.
In creating our Reward Manifesto we’ve also spoken to Company Chairs and other senior leaders of companies in our membership, plus leading advisers and economists.
At this event, we will discuss the specific reward related topics on which we believe Boards must now develop a sharp sensitivity in order to form decisions that are within the boundaries of stakeholder acceptability.
Speakers
Alan Giles
Chairman of The Remuneration Consultants Group and Senior Independent Director and RemCo Chair of Foxtons
Alan is Chairman of The Remuneration Consultants Group, Senior Independent Director and Remuneration Committee Chair of Foxtons plc, and a Non-Executive Director of Murray Income Trust plc. He is also an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and an Honorary Visiting Professor at Bayes Business School, City, University of London, where he is Deputy Chair of the Advisory Board of the Mergers & Acquisitions Research Centre.
Alan has extensive retail sector experience, having been Chairman of Fat Face from September 2006 until July 2013. Earlier in his career he formed HMV Group as Chief Executive in 1998 as a leveraged buy-out and led the Group through its London Stock Exchange IPO in 2002 before retiring from the Group in September 2006 to develop a portfolio of non-executive and teaching roles. From 1993 to 1998 he was Managing Director of Waterstone’s, having joined WH Smith Group in 1982 and being appointed to their board in November 1995. He also served as Operations and Development Director for Do It All and General Manager (Books) for WH Smith Retail. Prior to this, he spent seven years in buying and marketing roles with Boots. He was a non-executive director of Rentokil Initial plc from 2006 to 2017, Wilson Bowden plc from 2004 to 2007 and Somerfield plc from 1993 until 2004. He was also a non-executive director of The Competition & Markets Authority until March 2019, having been a non-executive director of the Office of Fair Trading from 2007.
He attended Merton College, University of Oxford, where he graduated in Physics and holds a Masters in Management degree from The Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, California. He was awarded an OBE for services to business and the UK economy in 2018.
Neil Morrison FCIPD
Director of HR, Severn Trent
Neil is the Director of HR for FTSE100 water company, Severn Trent where he is responsible for the HR function as well as the internal and external communications and marketing teams Prior to joining Severn Trent his career has taken him across multiple industries and sectors, including media, retail, and utilities as well as the public sector. Throughout this time there has been a common thread, helping organisations, and their people, to successfully navigate change. From his early career supporting the delivery of one of the first private finance partnerships in the NHS, through the introduction of pioneering e-commerce in retail and responding to the changing retail landscape. He was one of the leads in the global merger between Penguin and Random House, the largest merger in publishing history and helped successfully navigate the rise of digital publishing and media. Neil sits on the Board of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and has previously served on the board of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development. He was one of the inaugural members of the REC’s Good Recruitment Campaign as well as contributing to and supporting government policies and initiatives.
Duncan Weldon
Economics Correspondent, The Economist
Duncan is the Britain economics correspondent for The Economist. His previous journalistic roles include the economics correspondent for BBC Newsnight and columnist for Prospect Magazine. An economist by background Duncan began his career at the Bank of England and also worked in asset management and public policy. His book on British economic history titled Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through was published in 2021.
