We were joined at the event by a guest speaker, as well as senior reward professionals representing a range of organisations from a number of different industries. This facilitated a high degree of meaningful information sharing on performance-related reward practices and key trends.  Please click here for a summary of current RLF members.

For more information on the performance related reward event or the survey that we ran on performance reward, please contact Vicki Badham: vicki@qcg.co.uk or 02074624837.

For more information about the survey, the results of which were supplemented by the findings and conclusions from the Reward Leaders Forum, please contact Vicki Badham on 0207 4624837 or vicki@qcg.co.uk.

• The current trends in expatriate rewards and international rewards more generally
• How rewards can support global mobility and talent management
• The main considerations for setting the level of globally consistency relating to rewards
• The factors involved in determining a global rewards strategy
• The key challenges facing reward professionals working on international rewards

For more information on the international rewards event or survey, or more generally on the Reward Leaders Forum, please contact Vicki Badham: vicki@qcg.co.uk

 - The main challenges facing reward professionals in such an uncertain economic and business climate;

- The drivers of the mixed picture of rewards in 2011 and for moving forward into 2012;

-  How to get the rewards right for top performers and high potentials, whilst motivating and engaging
   with majority of the workforce;

-  The role of managers in communicating and delivering reward strategies;

-  The key tenets of reward strategies going forward; and

-  How to position rewards once the market picks up.

For further details about the survey report, please contact Vicki Badham: vicki@qcg.co.uk

No apolgy required for our political leaders or indeed the media bringing focus to the cost and value of public service delivery, but as a few have pointed out loyal public servants did not create the crisis non in the main can they solve it!

Nevertheless, it is obviously right that the numbers of staff, their pay, pensions and other conditions should be under scrutiny.  What a shame that the debate is rather shallow – leaving everyone with a view that all you get for public sector pay management [or receipt] is a bad name.

First some good that seems to be coming out of all this.  Fundamental reviews are being conducted: Hutton (pensions), Hutton (fair pay), Winsor (police pay and conditions)……the last of these a particulary well written and insightdul analysis – part 1 at least. What a shame that two key points rather cloud the landscape:

1. First the fair pay report, which has some realy good stuff about transparency and  avoiding paying for failure, falls far short of addressing the fundamental point about how to determine the level of pay appropriate for our most senior public servants.  Good that it rubbishes the 20 times mutiple, but so bad that it recommends an equally barmy top to median one; 
2. Second, the  public debate – whether informed by political leaders or the media is debased by disinterest in evidence or rational thought or arguement.

Where freom here?  Let’s get some real debate going about some of the key issues, based on what most citizens would probably want: a well respected and directed public service, paid fairly without the outcomes blackening their name.

Let us start, self indulgently, with QCG – after all it is our blog.  People who deliver results has been our strapline since our creation in 2000.  Now a mid-sized consultancy, we firmly believe that our commitment to our clients’ needs and issues and how their business can be improved by getting the people things right is an undeniable truth.   But, more than that, the mantra applies to ourselves, with a high level of commitment to building and developing a highly diverse and talented team – letting them intellectually loose and getting them to work together to achieve great results for our clients.  This is why we have steadfastly refused to comply with protestations from procurement or others to introduce ISO standards or the like which are either a tick box exercise or a constraint on imagination or creativity in solving clients’ problems.

But here is the heart of the debate for this first post.  It is not enough for us to believe that we deliver great results for our clients – it has to be genuinely believed by those who look to us for our services.  And that can be tough given both differing client expectations, the intangible nature of some or our work and an even bigger challenge when clients are treating any discretionary spend as highly questionable.

Delivering £20million of savings through a post-merger integration or cutting pay costs through developing local pay models become easy sells – unless of course you are the UK Treasury and think that mutli-billion pounds of savings from public sector pay is not worth the candle!!  That’s a debate for another day.

No, the real crunch comes with companies riding out a recession, or coming out of it and not knowing with any certainty what the economic or political landscape looks like.  Should they invest – can they with so little bank lending?  Big Society in a western, capitalist economy, whatever that is today?  Nervous customers, influenced by the instant messaging social phenomenon, rather than good old fashioned branding?

So back to the beginning.  Is it people who deliver results?  ‘Yes’, we still firmly believe this.  But the definition needs to go deeper into the genes of the organisation.  To get the best out of their people, leaders need to know much more about the aspirations and ideas of the people that work for them.  Across the organisation, people need much deeper insights into the needs and aspirations of their customers and society at large.  And HR strategies and practice need to move significantly away from compliance and policing and towards enabling and securing the energy and commitment of the people in the organisation in the direction of the total satisfaction of the customer experience.  Odd in this modern and so called sophisticated world that so few organisations can achieve these goals.