There is much talk about organizational alignment and the need to cascade strategic goals down the hierarchy. However, there is still limited attention given to reverse cascading: an alignment led by individual employees. Practices that focus on the development of operational standards or far reaching strategic objectives is no longer enough – especially as recruitment and retention become more and more of a priority. Innovative human resources practices that recognize the needs of individuals to stimulate superior performance are gaining importance.
This new orientation does not necessarily have people climb ladders to manage their career or deal with steps to calculate their salary, but rather provides a very different reference point that seeks to redefine the relationship between the individual and their workplace. Recently I came across a couple of novel human resources practices that did just that:
The North Broward Hospital District information services department came up with a compensation system for their information technology business unit that replaced their ladder with a personal dashboard. It is called career banding. Individuals within the career band groups are paid according to their competencies in a number of areas such as technical skills, problem solving skills and people skills as opposed to a set of position-based factors attached to narrowly set pay scales and steps.
The Finnish company, Nokia, maker of cell phones has engineered a way to design meaningful and fulfilling jobs by setting up highly "modular" structures so that instead of moving people around, they move teams around, thereby capitalizing on working relationships that have proven to be working well for its members – and in so doing reduce the amount of anxiety associated with difficult projects.
This new orientation does not necessarily have people climb ladders to manage their career or deal with steps to calculate their salary, but rather provides a very different reference point that seeks to redefine the relationship between the individual and their workplace. Recently I came across a couple of novel human resources practices that did just that:
The North Broward Hospital District information services department came up with a compensation system for their information technology business unit that replaced their ladder with a personal dashboard. It is called career banding. Individuals within the career band groups are paid according to their competencies in a number of areas such as technical skills, problem solving skills and people skills as opposed to a set of position-based factors attached to narrowly set pay scales and steps.
The Finnish company, Nokia, maker of cell phones has engineered a way to design meaningful and fulfilling jobs by setting up highly "modular" structures so that instead of moving people around, they move teams around, thereby capitalizing on working relationships that have proven to be working well for its members – and in so doing reduce the amount of anxiety associated with difficult projects.
There are many more such breakthroughs and I’ll try to highlight some of them in future blogs. In the interim, if you have a few you would like to share please feel free to contact me or attach a comment to this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment