Last Monday we discussed some of the ridiculous reasons that managers use to excuse their lack of fairness and Tuesday we covered what most employees actually mean by ‘fair’.
The main focus was on compensation and that doesn’t begin to cover it.
Unfair treatment from pay to perks to training to strokes to any form of attention will create problems.
Note: I didn’t say ‘might’ or ‘may’ cause problems, but will cause them.
Not just engagement, motivation and retention problems, but also problems with creativity, innovation, initiative (AKA leadership) and especially trust—there won’t be any.
So let’s be clear.
There is no acceptable reason to treat …read more

Yesterday I told you how monkeys lose productivity when treated unfairly.
Unlike the managers I described in that post, good managers know that unequal pay, but they also know that it’s not just a matter of title/grade.
Not everyone with the same title deserves the same compensation—in fact, to do so would be extremely unfair!
Most companies establish a range for each job and some guidelines within each range, but the guides frequently fall short of what’s needed in the real world.
How do you draw the lines to achieve fairness?
You might think that ‘fair’ is some kind of universal one-size-fits-all yardstick, but all …read more

Saturday we looked at some incongruous actions and compensation of various CEOs and it reminded me of something I read a year or so ago, so I went looking and found it. Amazing!
I realize that housing is a touchy subject these days, but over the last few decade as houses got bigger and bigger I found it weirder and weirder.
There’s no way to ever convince me that any family or person, really needs a seven thousand-plus square foot house in order to live comfortably—let alone 10,000 and up.
The item I remembered article was  an UpFront blurb in Business Week that …read more

I have some great links to add to those I gave you last Saturday.
Another article from McKinsey shines a spotlight on managers’ need to “master the disciplines of uncertainty,” because it isn’t going away any time soon.
The market may have torpedoed you and me, but it’s done far less damage to the corner office. “Compensation for top executives at many of the nation’s largest publicly traded firms was essentially unchanged last year, even as the stock market plummeted.” Why are we not surprised?
What has changed? An article in the WSJ Online tells us that COO positions are going the way …read more

Executive compensation is in the limelight these days—not that it’s ever out. People have always been fascinated by the lavish paychecks of high profile players, whether business leaders or Hollywood icons.
The list of executives paid for non-performance in 2006 pales in comparison to CEO pay in 2008.
We’re all taught the value of hard work, exceeding goals, giving our all, but some have found a better way—a loving Board.
Non-performance bonus money isn’t new; in 2007 Coke had a $2.9 billion noncash charge in the fourth quarter, so they cut 3500 workers and their execs missed their performance bonus targets, but the …read more