Building a High-Performance Finance Team

How do you find the right talent? How do you retain them and get the highest performance out of a diverse work group?

The Challenge Of Pay-For-Performance: What’s The Real Value?

For those of us who work in compensation, the “peanut butter” approach to pay-for-performance may not be new.

This approach consists of taking merit increase and variable pay budgets and spreading them thinly and evenly across the employee population. However, thin swipe of peanut butter may not make a very filling sandwich for the high performers who have been working through their lunches and missing dinners with their families.

So how do we use limited compensation dollars to recognize the contributions of our top-performers, while also keeping the rest of the employee population happy?

The Art of Getting Up Again

Early in my life I envied many of the people I came in contact with. They seemed so happy and so successful that I often wondered what was wrong with me. Sure, I was usually happy in my life, but was true success going to pass me by?

As I have grown older and gotten to know many of the people I once envied, I have come to find out that unbeknownst to me they had suffered many setbacks in their lives. It was just that I didn’t know them well enough at the time to be aware of it. There are actually very few people in this world any of us would really want to trade places with if we were required to not only take their success, but also any and ALL baggage they have.

Any Excuse Will Do

Just as you set goals for yourself with regard to networking contacts, job leads answered, or telephone calls made, set a goal for the making of new friends. After you have found some folks who provide you with an initial sense of success, build on those friendships. (Alas, you may have to go first several times, even with the same friend.)

The only time “any excuse will do” is unacceptable is when it comes to giving up.

At the Helm Stable Rates, Economic Uncertainty Encourage Business Reliance on Temp Labour

Increased reliance on part-time and agency temp labour during the economic recovery is not unique to the UK. IQNavigator has reported on the same phenomenon in the US, where temp hiring has been in the vanguard on new job creation. This similar pattern between the two nations in part must be attributable to the shared experience of global economic uncertainty. However, it also begs the question of whether one of the long term consequences of the recent recession will be a shift toward a more diversified and nuanced blend of working arrangements.