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Taking Views from the Senior Management Team

It is always important to involve the Senior Management Team (SMT) in Total Reward policy development. It is best to involve them from the outset to ensure that they understand and contribute to what you are doing.

The key reason for conducting management interviews or focus groups is to gain buy-in from those who will be accountable for implementing the strategy. Interviews can help identify the information that managers will find useful, and begin to develop an action plan.

This should focus on the 'big picture' and on priorities, not on the detail. It is important to gather the overall principles from senior staff, and not get way-laid by discussing the detailed definitions of specific reward elements

The specific organisation and style of the debate will depend on the make-up of the team and the nature of the facilitator's relationship with it. The focus will be on discovering either 'what really matters to people who work here?' or 'based on the kind of people you want to work here, what do you think would really matter to them?'.

The focus in each case will be on discovering either 'what really matters to people who work here ?' or 'based on the kind of people you want to work here, what do you think would really matter to them?'.

1. Brainstorming Session
2. Debate Based on Engaged Performance® Elements (alone or with a Reward Sort)

SMT Brainstorming Session

The specific Engaged Performance® elements in the Model may or may not be used, since you are designing for your own organisation. However, they could provide a helpful model (overt or not) for organising the outcomes.

Initially, the focus will be on debating issues such as:

• why do people come to work here?
• what are the most important things this organisation can offer people?
• what kind of people do we have now?
• what kind of people do we need?
• what are the key organisational elements and/or behaviours that we consider most important?

The session could move on to determining:

• Given the identified areas, what are the priorities (e.g. top 5) - i.e. the ones that really matter
• Against these, where does the organisation now stand (e.g. Poor, Acceptable, Good)
• Where should the organisation be against these, and what is the gap ?
• What can we do to address the gaps ?
• Among the gaps, what are a) our absolute priorities and b) what are we able to address, in both cost and ease of change terms.

A device such as the spending of a conceptual pot of money, might help here - but again it depends entirely on the situation. This may only be the start of the debate since any true development of proposals will probably involve detailed cost/benefit analysis.

SMT Debate Based on Engaged Performance® Elements

While similar to the Brainstorm, this approach is more structured around the standard EP model and elements.

The Total Reward concept should be presented along with the elements.

The debate should firstly cover:

• Are these about right for us or not?
• What is missing?
• What is not appropriate here?
• How might you change these elements?

The session could then move on to determine:

• What are the priorities (e.g. top 5) - i.e. the ones that really matter
• Against these, where does the business now stand (e.g. Poor, Acceptable, Good)
• Where should the business be against these, and what is the gap?
• What can we do to address the gaps?
• Among the gaps, what are a) our absolute priorities and b) what are we able to address, in both cost and ease of change terms

As in the Brainstorm, a device such as the spending of a conceptual pot of money, might help here - but again it depends entirely on the situation. Again, this may only be the start of the debate since any true development of proposals will probably involve detailed cost/benefit analysis.

A Reward Sort may also be used to facilitate debate, although this may not be a suitable tool for the SMT, as top teams generally prefer to focus on the strategic issues.