Consulting Services
Advice on Remuneration and Reward Policies and Practices
If you are an HR professional or a line manager with a few staff, remuneration is one of the major expense items in your budget, and one you cannot afford to get wrong. Organisations need to attract and retain expertise, and a key ingredient is the reward system, which must be:
| • | Innovative, to accommodate employees’ personal and professional circumstances, as well as changes in the organisation’s growth and structure |
| • | Cost-effective, to ensure that the company’s strategic plan is being supported, and that shareholders are getting value for the payroll dollar |
| • | Fair, to give employees and shareholders trust and confidence |
I provide advice in the three major areas of remuneration policy:
| • | External Value
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| • | Internal Value
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| • | Performance
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In addition I have extensive experience in more specialised areas of remuneration advice, such as senior management reward, sales remuneration and creating reward systems aligned to career progression, including knowledge-based/professional organisations.
For more details on the types of assignment I have worked on, click on the links below. To contact me for a preliminary, no-obligation discussion on your requirements, click here.
Some examples of projects I have managed:
Chief Executive and Senior Executive Team Pay Reviews
In the course of my career I have conducted many CEO pay reviews, including the introduction of new performance criteria for annual and long term bonus programmes for the CEO and Senior Executive Team. Some of these projects involved harmonization of policies for application in New Zealand within a framework determined by a global parent company.
I was project manager and co-author of a comprehensive review of the policy applied to setting a Chief Executive’s remuneration at the creation of a publicly-listed company. The CEO’s pay level and performance criteria were being challenged by shareholders, so the report was published by the Board for the Annual General Meeting. The review was considered a complete success as no questions were raised at the AGM!
Click here to discuss your own CEO/Senior Executive Review requirements.
A significant part of my work as a Reward Consultant’s work is assisting clients with market pricing – identifying the best source of information, then analysing the results and making recommendations, taking into account the specific job responsibilities and the employer’s remuneration policy. I have extensive experience in many industries and at all levels.
During the process of reviewing remuneration, it is very important to avoid taking decisions in isolation. The recommendations must take into account many environmental aspects to ensure fairness or to anticipate organisational changes – for instance the potential impact of the decision in other areas of the organisation, or future plans for growth or restructuring.
Click here to discuss your own Market Pricing requirements.
Job Evaluation and Job Family Structures
I have used many types of Job Evaluation programme, and have even developed tailored JE systems for some organizations with specific skill requirements.
In a high-technology company I instigated a project to refine and streamline Job Evaluation processes because the traditional hierarchy did not reflect the progression of skills and competencies required in their professional disciplines. This included the creation of approximately 75 generic Job Descriptions as well as Job Family structures to promote internal career progression and facilitate market benchmarking. The project covered Consultant, Sales, Project Management, Technical Service and Delivery, Finance and Customer Service roles.
Click here to discuss your own Job Evaluation or Job Family review requirements.
I created a new corporate and top management organization structure for a company preparing for an Initial Public Offering. This involved the structure itself, writing position descriptions and evaluating the new roles, market pricing, potential short-term and long-term variable pay programmes and the overall estimated costs for planning purposes.
A large engineering company in India was experiencing rapid expansion of its operations overseas. As co-leader of the project, I assisted in devising a new, more comprehensive and flexible organization structure for their corporate Human Resources division so that they could rapidly develop the skills necessary to respond to the needs of the newly-formed international subsidiaries.
Click here to discuss your own Restructuring requirements.
Harmonization of Remuneration in M&A
I assisted HR Managers with remuneration issues arising from the due diligence process, as well as the subsequent policy harmonization and employee communication processes once the take-over was complete. During the 3 years I worked for this high-technology company, they were acquiring smaller companies at the rate of about one every two months.
Click here to discuss your own M&A requirements.
Harmonization of Superannuation Plans
A major project to streamline superannuation schemes as a result of the merger of three large manufacturing companies, for which I was Project Leader. This involved:
| • | Reviewing the legacy superannuation schemes and recommending a rationalisation programme |
| • | Preparing the legal and administrative documentation (carried out by actuarial services, I acted as liaison with the client) |
| • | Preparing and coordinating communication programmes to managers, unions and staff. |
The project involved 7,500 staff members and took 18 months to complete.
Click here to discuss your own Superannuation requirements.
I have been involved in complete revisions of sales incentive programmes, including in professional services industries where performance measurement is sometimes difficult. In one instance I was involved in merging three separate sales forces. The assignment was made more complex by the fact that the customer bases combined Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to–Consumer (B2C) sales.
I was also in charge of a project to devise a fundamentally new sales incentive programme for two separate B2B sales forces.
Click here to discuss your own Sales Incentive requirements.
These are just a few of the many projects I have been involved in. To have a confidential discussion on any Remuneration and Reward issue, how it affects your company and how I might help you, please contact me by telephone or email.
My status as an independent consultant is important to me, because I believe I can provide clients with impartial, pragmatic advice which is in the best interests of your company and your employees. If I or my associates consider that a course of action is potentially not in the best interests of either our client or the employees for whom we are carrying out the consultancy work, then we will withdraw from the assignment and charge only for the time and expenses which have been incurred up to the time of that withdrawal.
During the course of our work we are frequently entrusted with confidential information, both about individual employees and the client organisation’s strategic plans. Any data or information acquired by me or my associates during the course of our assignments is handled with the utmost confidentiality, and we will constantly strive to ensure its integrity through all reasonable means available to me. Click here to see more details of our general Terms of Trade, including our policies on Privacy.
Organisations need to attract and retain expertise, and a key ingredient is the reward system.