Chapter 11 Discussion Post

1. Concept and Brief Description
2. Emotional Hook (provocative question/claim/real-life problem)
3. Key Points to Elicit in Discussion
4. Facilitative Questions

1. Pay and compensation was another one of those things in business I always just kind of assumed took care of themselves. I never really imagined that there was a person whose job it was to analyze what the company's needs were, what value it was that I provided, what the industry paid for similar jobs, and set ranges of pay that I could receive for doing that job. What I thought was interesting was that companies have "red-circles" and "green-circles" that help them know where employees are falling on their pay ranges. If an employee is getting paid above their limit, that employee is in the red. If an employee is getting paid below the max limit the company would pay him or her, that employee is in the green. The interesting thing is that I'm sure companies have most of their employees in the green. What determines whether an employee ends up getting paid in the red or green circle? In my mind the biggest factor would be the negotiations that take place between the hirer and the employee. (assuming we're talking about the type of job that has these kinds of negotiations.)

2. Have you ever negotiated a starting wage or pay increase with your boss?

3. I remember when I first moved up to Provo, I applied at Macy's on U-Parkway and Dillards at South Town. I decided not to take the job at Dillard's, even though they offered me a sales position. I tried to use this as leverage at Macy's (where I really wanted to work.) I told Macy's that Dillards was offering to pay me more, but they insisted their pay structure for starting employees was fixed. (this was one of those high turnover positions that didn't have much room for negotiating.) Later I found out why Dillards paid more. They tie their employee's wages to their sales performance. If you didn't meet quotas (which I was later told by former Dillard's employees were unrealistic,) your pay dropped. A lot of employees left Dillard's to come to Macy's because their wage had dipped too low. The point of this story is that even similar companies can have very different pay structures. How a company chooses to pay is critical to recruiting and retention. Dillard's pay structure certainly recruited, but failed to retain.

4. Have you ever been on a pay structure other than a straight hourly wage? (ie: commission, wage plus commission, skills based, location based, etc.) Were you ever hurt by a poor or misleading pay structure? Have you ever left a job because of pay?

Reflections

Today Jeff from ancestry.com came and talked about how they do HR over there. The interesting element for me was compensation. I didn't realize how many OTHER factors combine into the "compensation" umbrella. Even little things like donuts are part of the overall package! It makes me want to identify other methods of compensating employees that may make them happy and satisfied without having to spend extra money.