by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
In an article appearing in IndustryWeek entitled “Trying to Ensure Fair Pay, Employers Are Changing Policies,” it noted that according to a recent employer survey “2018 Getting Compensation Right,” “60% of U.S. employers are planning to take some action this year to prevent bias in hiring and pay decisions.” Further, 53% “are planning on or considering adding a recognition program.”
The report went on, “37% percent are planning on or considering changing criteria for salary increases. Among employers not redesigning their programs, most are making changes to the importance of factors used to set base pay increases.”
In short, the report led one to believe that employers overall wanted to make pay fairer, but one got the impression that there was no clear path. It is difficult in this environment to talk about raising workers wages without shareholders mounting a revolt. But with the reported shorted of skilled labor, the difficulty in training workers with a lean staff and no structure, strategy or record keeping, etc. an area of compromise has to be reached. If not, skilled workers will not apply, or stay, and the shareholder profits will definitely be affected. It is the “bullet that needs to be bit” to get the economy working like it did so well post World War II when everyone felt they had a chance at doing well for themselves and their family.
One easy-to-set-up, easy-to-implement, low investment/high return strategy for paying workers for the documented value the employee has accumulated has been discussed in previous Proactive Technologies Report articles, most recently “A Pay-for-Value Worker Development Program – Fair to Management and Workers, and Effective Too!” and previously in “Pay-For-Value Employee Programs.”
Developing each worker should be a linear process in spite of inputs from all direction. A person is selected based on closeness of fit with established criterion. The person is then trained on the units of work for which they will be responsible. Once proficient, the person routinely performs these tasks – evaluated at some point based on set criterion for their level of performance and, in some cases, compensation is assigned accordingly. Feedback on how to improve performance is given and additional incentivized development goals can be assigned 
to drive work performance even higher.
Too often this process is disjointed and arbitrary. If structured, there are many points where qualitative and quantitative metrics than can be used to accurately assess worker value so compensation can be linked to the value the employer can derive. If structured, the path to a worker’s mastery of the job can be accelerated and the tools to drive them to that level effective and efficient. The more tasks the employer has mastered and more value the employee can contribute to the operation, compensation should reflect that.
If you would like to know how Proactive Technologies’ Pay-For Value Compensation Programs approach might work at your firm, and how a pilot project may be the best way to introduce this approach to your organization, contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff.
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