Client
UK not-for-profit housing association that has been providing affordable housing solutions for over 20 years. The business had an established generalist HR team with limited reward expertise and a diverse Executive Leadership team with varying views on reward strategy.
Solution
- Aligned the Executive Leadership Team on the direction of the Reward Strategy through facilitating bespoke Leadership workshop sessions on Reward strategy.
- Worked with the outputs from the Executive workshops together with understanding of the company culture and values to define a long-term reward strategy, reward philosophy and reward principles.
- Developed a 3-year Reward plan and a Reward governance framework to ensure long-term fairness and consistency.
Challenge
- Concern around a lack of a clear Reward strategy that linked to corporate values and/or supported business success throughout the organisation.
- No levelling or grading structure used consistently across the entire organisation for fairness and consistency.
- Lack of job descriptions.
- Segmented approaches to reward.
Impact
- Working in partnership with the HR team to understand the dynamics of the Executive Leadership team, designed, developed and facilitated workshops to ensure all leadership had a common level of knowledge of reward and they were empowered to jointly influence the development of the long-term reward strategy. Once the Reward Strategy, philosophy and principles were collectively approved, this provided clear direction for future reward development.
"Thank you for your support, we have the green light to progress."
Context
The client is a not-for-profit housing association that has been providing affordable housing solutions for over 20 years. The organisation had a very clear purpose with a strong and diverse Executive Leadership team.
The Problem
- Concern around a lack of a clear and cohesive direction for reward at Executive level due to varying levels of understanding and experience.
- No business-wide reward strategy or principles across leading to localised decision making with risks around fairness and consistency.
- Reward tended to be reactive rather than proactive and was without any real defined frameworks for consistency and governance.
Which meant:
- Reactive rather than proactive approaches to reward.
- Concerns around fairness and consistency in allocation of reward.
- Risk of a lack of strategic Reward decision making.
- Inconsistency in reward and lack of reward governance.
The Tension
HR wanted a cohesive reward strategy and approach defined by the Executive team.
Finance needed more reassurance around reward structure and approach for budgeting and planning.
Leaders had no understanding of organisational reward and were applying limited and localised knowledge.
The client came to us as they recognised they had limited Reward Expertise being a generalist HR function. They also felt that the Executive team would be better influenced by external expertise as there was a concern over possible conflict.
What Reward Heads did
- Worked with the HR Generalist team to define the existing reward problems, understand the organisational culture and values, and evaluate how engaged and knowledgeable the Executive team were on reward.
- Designed a Reward Strategy workshop for Executive Leaders to educate, define and design the Reward strategy.
- Design and receive approval on the Reward strategy, philosophy, and key principles which then provided a framework for a 3-year Reward plan and a Reward governance framework.
Business Impact
- Leadership and HR had a clear strategy for reward going forward which increased trust and confidence.
- HR where able to then plan out a 3-year roadmap of reward priorities and improvements.
People Impact
- Leaders were fully engaged, understood and owned the reward strategy.
- HR were able to explain reward principles to managers and use them to implement fairer reward decision making for employees.
Which resulted in …
Leadership can now confidently own and explain reward strategy.
Reward now has a clear direction for frameworks for levelling, pay, benefits and governance.
Following approval of the Reward Strategy, we continued to work with the client on a levelling/grading framework, pay benchmarking, flexible/hybrid working, and a company car/allowance review.
If this feels familiar …
Many organisations come to us for support in specific areas of reward but often, it's best to start at the beginning and ensure the reward strategy is clear, leadership are fully behind it, and you have principles to underpin all elements of Total Reward.
