When you’re trying to grab the attention of Senior Management, remember
this; they like a good story, especially one with pictures.
If your story is intended to address the company’s single largest
expense – employee pay programs – the pictures will be charts & graphs that
illustrate the points being made.
Pictures (charts and graphs) capture attention and build memories much
better than text or even the spoken word. Show a picture and the image is
locked in, while reliance on text only can be a risky proposition. The drone of
dry prose can grow boring and is liable to lose the attention of all but your
strongest supporters.
Attention grabbers that work: 1) speedometer style
formats that graphically indicate the current situation against the
target; 2) the green light, yellow light, red light approach,
again to colorfully paint a picture that stays in the mind; and 3) pie
charts, tables and even regressed lines that tell a story.
People remember images because they capture the imagination. Your
audience might have a hard time recalling (and taking to heart) what you said
or even what you wrote, so concentrate on your supportive imagery.
Make the story you’re telling is a short one. I once worked for a CEO
who thought that any proposal could be reduced to a single piece of paper, with
plenty of white space left over. “If you need more than that,” he would say,
“it’s not such a grand idea.”
You need a plan
However, before you settle on the visual format best suited to sell your
case, you should focus on the supportive data points necessary to make that
case. Remember the old adage that a dream without a plan is only a fantasy? If
you don’t take action steps to convert ideas to reality, what you’ll be left
with is smoke & mirrors – all talk and few results to show for your
efforts.
For those who have ever been on a diet, the experts recommend that you
treat the effort like a project plan. They advise participants to write down
everything they eat, to have goals to strive for and to set milestones to gauge
progress. It also helps to keep score – to know where you stand and where
you’re headed.
To accomplish this, you should create quantifiable metrics that
collectively will illustrate the state of health of your compensation
program(s) – and then establish baselines (current state) and targets for each
performance indicator. This key step will help you understand whether your
costs are being contained and whether the ROI on employee rewards is at the
level your company requires.
Commonly used HR metrics:
§ Average salary/wage
§ Compa-ratios
(comparison of pay to a range midpoint)
§ Count of
employees per segment (hourly, non-exempt, professional, management)
§ Average
performance ratings
§ Average
annual pay rise for each performance rating
§ Count and
average promotional and “equity” increases
§ Voluntary turnover
(employees who decided to leave)
§ Average
employee age and length of service
We could go on and on, but you get the point. Refine these and any other
quantifiable factors by further segmentation – salary grade, employee group,
male/female, etc. Make sure each metric is measurable, because accuracy
counts. A compelling argument demands precision.
To make these metrics work for you and to avoid a series of make-work
arithmetic exercises that do nothing more than capture minutiae, be certain to
measure what is important to your business – not simply what data you can
capture. Make sure the importance of the metric is clear to management or can
be made so. Management needs to grasp the importance of attaining a goal
demonstrating success with a metric to understand why the metric is important
and what its achievement means for the business.
Once you have the right metrics established (collectively called the
“dashboard”) and a baseline in place, you will be able to readily see both
what’s going well and where the problems lie. At this point you can set
specific target figures going forward to improve these weak areas, creating
periodic milestones to mark your progress.
What to look for
Every organization has different pressure points. However, if your
metrics data indicates any of the following situations, management should be
informed that a problem needs to be addressed:
§ Average
performance ratings that exceed how the business was rated
§ A workforce
where key segments are approaching retirement age
§ Promotion and
“equity” increase activity that overwhelms the budget
§ Low
compa-ratios that indicate you are not paying your salary ranges
§ Any figure
that is an unpleasant surprise.
When you’re telling a story to management, make it compelling – packed
with facts and pictures that feed off the critical metrics analysis that is
describing the pulse of your business. Then bring home the sale by showing how
to solve the challenges being faced – with practical strategies designed to end
your story on a happy and successful note.
