Compensation Cafe: Fair Pay, Differentiated Rewards

April 21, 2015

Derek Irvine

by Derek Irvine

Recognize This! -- Differentiating recognition and rewards for top performers is critical while still allowing for all to participate in the opportunity to be recognized for work well done.

I intentionally stirred the compensation and recognition pot in my last post on Compensation Cafe. With a title like "An Argument for Unfair Pay," I'm sure you can imagine the post received several insightful and detailed comments. So, in my post yesterday on the Cafe, I took advantage of the very smart readers and fellow bloggers to showcase some of those comments and learnings.

Here's a taste of thoughts around the appropriate balance between paying and recognizing people fairly while allowing for the differentiation necessary for the top performers:

Jacque Vilet:

"Let them have access to high level management to discuss progress and to get help in removing any organizational barriers that are keeping them from solving the problem."
Jim Brennan:

"The Pareto Principle still applies."
E. K. Torkornoo:

"Keep them away from terrible managers, narcissistic leaders and distracting politics (to the extent possible); assign them to teams with others they respect, listen carefully and respond to them.
Ted Weinberger:

"I refer you to an article in Personnel Psychology 2012 on "The Best and the Rest: Revisting the Norm of Normality of Individual Differences" by O'Boyle and Aguinis for an academic discussion of this subject."
Tony Bermann-Porter:

"The notion that you can provide meaningful performance differentiation with a 2-3% budget is fanciful."