用新概念来理解薪酬管理的框架.doc

本科毕业论文（设计）外文原文外文出处 Benefits&CompensationDigest;Vol.46,No.9September2009 外文作者 FrankL.Giancola 原文：AFrameworkforUnderstandingNewConceptsinCompensation ManagemenSeptember 2009 Vol. 46, No. 9The author looks at the history of skill-based pay, broadbanding and total rewardsthree major concepts in compensation management that have developed over the last quarter century. The reasons they have failed to catch on as well as experts expected provide in-sight into how professionals deal with new ideas in the profession.Over the past 25 years, several major new concepts in compensation management have reflected overly ambitious goals. Experts have disagreed about their basic premises, and the business world has had trouble accepting them. Examining the history of three such conceptsskill-based pay, broadbanding and total rewardsis worthwhile, for it reveals the challenges they present and helps define a pattern for how profes-sionals deal with these and other new ideas in the profession.Skill-Based PayThe skill-based approach for deter-mining base pay is based on an employ-ees skills, rather than his or her current job. Leading thinkers in compensation management have supported this ap-proach since the 1980s. According to compensation experts Patricia Zingheim and Jay Schuster, it is the “next great thingin pay and benefits.” In an interview, Edward Lawler called it “the compensationsystem of the future.”This approach shifts the focal point from the job to the person, with the goals of providing employees with greater in-centives to improve skills and competencies and giving management a more versatile workforce. Generally, employees are paid to acquire higher skills in their own field or lateral ones in related fields. From a systems standpoint, job descriptions, job evaluation plans and job-based salary surveys are replaced by skill profiles, skill evaluation plans and skill-based salary surveys.The disappearance of the traditional job provides the primary rationale for this change. Today, employees are said to have variable and unstable work assignments, with roles that cannot be assigned a valid pay rate in traditional job evaluation plans.Contentious TenetsThe main tenets of skill-based pay (SBP) conflict with mainstream business thinking. The first tenet is that pay should be based only on skills, taking the value of an employees work to an organization out of the pay equation. In effect, SBP advocates are asking compensation professionals to set the same pay rate for employees, based on their skills, even though they might have substantially different duties and responsibilities and make substantially different contributions to a firms success. The omission of something of fundamental value to the firm makes the concept a hard sell with managers and employees. In recent years, compensation experts have affirmed the value of work as an essential part of the pay equation.The second tenet is the notion that pay should be based on how many skills employees have or how many jobs they potentially can do, not on the job they currently hold. Here again, SBP advocates make what many firms consider an unreasonable request. They introduce a controversial pay for potential concept that directly contradicts the pay for performance concept compensation professionals have diligently strived to establish. In recent years, emphasis has been on what employees actually accomplish on the job, rather than on static concepts relating to who they are, such as their management potential or length of service. Also, by asking firms to pay employees for a job that they might perform in the future, SBP is a practice few firms could afford.With these core beliefs, SBP has experienced an uphill battle for acceptance as the primary means to determine base pay.Questionable AssumptionThe SBP concept rests on a questionable assumptionthat a job does not reflect the skills of the person required to do it. That makes job evaluation plans an nappropriate method for valuating skills and setting pay rates. According to SBP advocates, skills must be valued by using market-based skill surveys. They overlook the fact that most point-factor job evaluation plans award the bulk of their points for the possession and application of knowledge, skills and abilities. On this point, Lawler has stated, “In many cases, this (skill-based pay) will not produce dramatically different pay rates than are produced by paying for the nature of the job. After all, the skills that people have usually match reasonably ell the jobs that they are doing.”Also overlooked is the fact that many ccupations (e.g., accountant, electrician and actuary) do reflect the skills required to perform them; when salary surveys are conducted and employees are paid based on occupation titles and job summaries, skill requirements are being valued.Ambiguous DefinitionFew “new” ideas in compensation management represent a complete break from the prior ideas. Although SBP was billed as a new idea in compensation when introduced, it included old compensation practices, such as career ladders and generalist classifications.The result is that today, when companies are surveyed to see if they use SBP practices, those that use old SBP practices are counted among the firms that have signed on to the concept. This gives a false picture about the adoption of this“new” way of paying employees and contributes to varying descriptions of the concepts level of acceptance.Execution IssuesSBP presents formidable problems for practitioners who have an interest in applying the concept. To install a skill-based plan, practitioners need management information systems for identifying, valuing, certifying and tracking employee skills. Neither these systems nor market surveys that value skills have been developed to manage plans efficiently for large groups of employees.One result is that practitioners are able to apply the concept only for small groups of employees, mostly hourly and nonexempt salaried employees whose jobs are uncomplicated, rather than professional and managerial employees. Another result is that compensation professionals may attempt to implement SBP without the tools to do the job correctly.Concept Scaled BackThe skill-based concept is less far reaching than originally proposed. In the 1980s, it was seen as a replacement for job evaluation plans, affecting base pay for most employees. Today, advocates admit that no single pay system provides the best answer for all employees and that a one-time bonus payment for skill acquisition is a valid application of the concept. One expert believes that it is particularly well suited for applications with blue-collar employees in capital-intensive manufacturing industries, which tend to have highly customized plans.Competency-Based PayIn the 1990s, competency-based pay was introduced as a type of SBP plan for professional and managerial employees.It calls for base pay to be determined based on competencies instead of duties and responsibilities. Shortly after the concept was introduced, controversy arose as to what constitutes a legitimate competency. Today, there are many alternatives to choose fromcore, organizational, behavioral and technical competencies. One compensation expert has asked for a governing body, similar to those in the accounting profession, to help sort out wha the term competency actually means inthe world of employee compensation.As professionals have struggled with the terms meaning, pay-for-competencies has experienced greater use in performance management (41% of surveyed firms) than in base pay determination (14% of firms), a development SBP advocates did not predict.Changes in the economy and the nature of worksuch as the rise of the contingent workforce and the disappearance of traditional jobs, which were predicted to result in a need for SBPhave not materialized. That and the lack of administrative support systems probably have contributed to the concepts slow growth. Today, SBP is associated with blue-collar workers in manufacturing industries, which are in decline in the United States, while competency-based pay has had a greater impact on performance management than on base pay.Despite these issues and setbacks, prominent compensation experts continue to support the concept.BroadbandingOne of the most visible concepts in compensation management in the 1990s was broadbanding, which collapses many salary grades and ranges into fewer bands with broader salary spans. Its popularity was attributed in part to the 1990s trend to downsize organizations by reducing the number of hierarchical levels.When broadbanding was introduced, some thought leaders saw it as a new pay program for managing salaries and supporting organizational initiatives, such as eliminating bureaucracy and reducing costs.Others saw it as a “higher order of change” and a new way of managing human resources that would be a catalyst for organizational change and represent much more than a new way to reduce bureaucracy and costs. The concept was loosely defined, and companies were said to have welcomed the opportunity to adapt it to their unique needs. And some were given credit for adopting it, even though one cited plan had 13 bands, with multiple salary ranges within them, making it resemble a traditional salary administration plan.FlexibilityOne constant in the dialogue on broadbanding is that it provides the flexibility to accommodate change and to define job responsibilities more broadly. Proponents have dismissed traditional salary administration systems as being too structured, with too many rules.Execution IssuesEarly experience with broadbanding was not completely positive. Although these systems were supposed to reduce costs, managers had too much discretion to increase salaries within the bands. After several years, salaries had progressed to levels that could not be justified.“Second generation” banded systems gave less freedom for managers to determine salaries. These systems include more bands and specifically define salary ranges within the bands,making them resemble the traditional systems they were supposed to replace.Two compensation textbooks have reserved final judgment on the value of broadbanding. One sees it as a potential reprise of the type of salary administration “flexibility” that gave rise to the traditional plans. These plans were developed to reduce favoritism and inconsistencies that resulted from a lack of structure and controls that exist in broadbanding.PrevalenceFor these reasons and because of a renewed interest in cost containment, broadbanding may not have lived up to its billing as the future of compensation management. In 2003, a survey of 1,226 compensation professionals found that 9% used broadbanding and only 2% of line managers made the decision to assign grades to jobs, one of the hallmarks of broadbanding.In 2008, a compensation survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting found that 21% of firms use the concept,down from 26% in 2002. Broadbanding usually appeals to fast-moving organizations that experience continual change,and there is a tendency for companies to develop unique plans.Total RewardsIn the past decade, professional associations, major human resource consulting firms and compensation experts have advocated the total rewards approach to the development of a firms rewards strategy. Some billed it as more than a passing phase and possibly the greatest breakthrough in compensation since health care plans were combined with pay packages.The approach calls for HR professionals to consider all aspects of the work experience of value to people when developing a strategy to attract, retain and motivate employees.It extends the prior concept of total compensation, which encompassed only pay and benefit programs, and gives form to an idea described in a compensation textbook widely used in the 1970s.Thus, the idea is more novel than radical.In the early 2000s, after the intense competition for talent and the economy of the 1990s had cooled, employers sought ways to reduce costs and needed a strategy that places more emphasis on low-cost rewards and less on costly pay and benefit programs, such as stock options.Total rewards meets that need with its message that learning and development, recognition and other soft-dollar programs are as important as pay and benefits in satisfying employees. In addition, it provides a flexible and broad array of rewards that responds well to globalization, mergers and acquisitions, and other forces that increase workforce diversity.Execution IssuesThe launch of total rewards confirmed the axiom that new compensation programs typically are simple in concept, but complex in execution. When HR practitioners put the concept into practice, they encountered many stumbling blocks. That led two consultants to describe human resource professionals in late 2004 as“feeling confused or sensing chaos regarding total rewards.” A primary cause of the confusion was experts who used different names, definitions and models to describe it.Corrective actions were taken to address these issues, courses were developed on total rewards management and the basic concept was simplified.Still, compensation professionals are likely to use other terms to refer to it, with the labels for outdated reward strategiescompensation and benefits package and total compensationbeing used about as frequently as the new term.Too Broadly DefinedA major contributor to the confusion and chaos seems to be the definition of the term. Initially, practitioners were advised to consider as a reward all that an employee values in the employment relationship,rather than including only those that would have real meaning to employees and represent a coherent and manageable strategy.In 2006, the concept was simplified to reflect practitioners experiences in an influential total rewards model used by the association of compensation professionals, WorldatWork. Two complex elementswork design and organizational factors, such as challenging work and strong executive leadershipwere removed from the organizations original 2000 list of key rewards.These elements are hard to implement and are important in producing an engaged workforce.In addition to having fewer total rewards elements to deal with, firms are given credit for total rewards by taking one-dimensional actions, such as by of-fering a thank you from the boss, rather than a substantial recognition program, or by offering a telecommuting program, rather than a culture that embraces work/life balance.Today, total rewards is a much less demanding concept than the original described by WorldatWork, and experts do not always agree on the list of total rewards. Mercer Human Resources uses a total rewards model similar to the 2006 WorldatWork model, but is in a minority. Five other HR consultants use the complex model introduced by WorldatWork in 2000.PrevalenceAs with other new concepts, it is difficult to quantify the adoption of the total rewards strategy since many of the itemsthat demonstrate usebeyond the standard group of pay and benefit programsexisted in many companies before the concept was formally introduced. For example, before the concept became popular, career development programs were in place in many companies as part of the overall HR strategy.There is a very mixed usage picture for the total rewards strategy in the field, based on surveys such as these: Buck Consultants 2007 survey of 138 organizations representing a diverse industry and organization profile found that 11% have a total rewards strategy. Watson Wyatts 2005 survey of 265 U.S. organizations with at least 1,000 employees, representing various industries and regions, found that 70% have a total rewards strategy.While it is too soon to tell what effect total rewards will ultimately have on compensation practices, it already has accomplished two goalsshifting attention to soft-dollar HR programs and making more practitioners aware of the value of the full spectrum of rewards.ConclusionsIn sum, new concepts in compensation management have the following general profile: Are novel, but not radically new Are simple in concept, but complex in execution Do not always have expert agreement on main tenets Overlap with prior concepts, creating a misleading impression about their adoption Result in major execution issues, largely because of conceptual confusion Do not reach expected adoption figures Have a place in the field, but not a dominant role.Given this pattern, compensation professionals are advised to examine new concepts closely to see if the ideas are too broadly defined, reflect expert agreement, represent significant change and provide guidance on execution and best applications. In addition, practitioners should closely review usage surveys of new concepts to determine if a concepts broad definition and historical roots have caused related prior practices to be counted as evidence of the new ones acceptance. They also should seek information as to why organizations have turned down or stopped using a new concept. And, at the risk of appearing behind the times, they would be well-advised to wait until the knowledge base on the concept has been fully developed before adopting it. 译文：用新概念来理解薪酬管理的框架作者看技能报酬,宽带薪酬及总回报的历史,三个主要的概念在薪酬管理上发展已经超过四分之一世纪。他们没能明白的原因是专家预计眼前提供专业人士在职业上如何处理新想法.在过去的25年里,在薪酬管理上几个主要的新概念反映了求成的目标。专家们不同意他们的基本前提,商界接受他们有困难。研究3个概念的历史技能报酬,宽带薪酬及总回报背景-是值得的,因为它揭示了他们呈现的挑战,帮助定义一个模式专业人士如何处理这些和职业中的其他新思想。技能型支付决定技能型基本工资是基于雇员的能力,而不是他或她目前的工作。从1980年开始,在薪酬管理上领先的思想家就支持这种方法。按照补偿专家Patricia