Progress or Bluster? The Opportunity of Total Reward

Total Reward has always been a difficult concept. Reward’s Holy Grail is finding the sweet spot where pay and non-monetary benefits create a package that aligns with both the organisation’s goals and the needs and values of employees, thereby creating an engaged and productive workforce.

It has always been more difficult to do in practice and it’s about to get a lot more difficult. Working age populations are shrinking across most of the planet, particularly in developed economies. As Birmingham University’s Professor Rebecca Riley put it, this means that companies will find it more difficult to recruit just at the point when there are fewer managers with the skills to manage the problem:
“The labour pool will continue to reduce significantly. Businesses will continue to find it difficult to fill posts. As the 1970s trough is now moving into senior and middle management this also reduces the pool of experienced people who will lead responses to this labour constraint.”

So getting Total Reward right is going to become a lot more important. It’s a good thing that companies have been innovating in their Reward policies, right?

Well not everybody is convinced. In fact, some argue that not a lot has changed in recent years.

As Centrica’s RemCo chair Carol Arrowsmith put it:
“Businesses spend most of their mental energy differentiating themselves. Only in Reward do they all crowd into the same corner.”

As RemCo Chair and portfolio NED Alan Giles remarked:
“There is widespread dissatisfaction with risk-averse ‘one size fits all’ outcomes on remuneration – although views vary on who is to blame.” 

In an environment that is likely to become increasingly competitive, will organisations get away with doing what they have always done? Is this a subject that has attracted a lot of chatter and new products but little progressive action?

Or is this criticism unfair? Given increasing regulations and conflicting employee and investor demands, is it really possible to design and deliver a holistic total reward strategy that resonates with today’s increasingly diverse workforce, including multi-generational colleagues and a breadth of ethnicity and social background, whilst supporting ambitions for organisational performance and growth?

At our June Total Rewards event you will have the opportunity to reflect on and debate how to develop a sustainable total rewards approach with our expert panel.

We will consider trends and innovation in the area of non-monetary incentives but also how a balance, aligned to your reward budget and organisational goals, can be achieved between the monetary and non-monetary elements of your total rewards offering.

What role can benefits, organisational culture, purpose, values, working patterns, wellness offerings, career design and retirement support, play in attracting, motivating and retaining talent? What use should be made of technology?

Critically where is the evidence that these non-monetary levers have an acceptable ROI and contribute to the intended impact of investing in them?

We will also look at the psychology behind total rewards and whether the term itself needs a refresh.

These questions will become increasingly urgent over the next half-decade. This is an event you really don’t want to miss.