Article: Approaching rewards as a value proposition strategy

Compensation & Benefits

Approaching rewards as a value proposition strategy

Piyush Mehta, Senior Vice President-HR, Genpact, talks about the relevance of the total value proposition strategy in the success of Genpact
 

We moved to a total value proposition strategy because a total rewards program does not differentiate one organisation from the other

 

Organisations now need to look beyond their current offerings and incorporate the value proposition if they wish to compete in the market

 

Every organization’s key expecta-tion from its compensation philos-ophy is to attract, reward and re-tain talent at an optimal cost. The total rewards program may include base pay, variable incentive plans, equity based plans, benefits and recognition programs. But is this enough to achieve the above goals? The answer may have been a ‘yes’ a few years ago, but if someone is asked this question today, the answer –would be ‘no’. A total rewards program alone does not differentiate one organization from the other. And this is the reason why Genpact moved from total rewards approach to total value proposition strategy.

Over the years, the definition of total rewards has expanded and it now comprises of cash compensation, variable pay, long term pay, benefits and last but possibly the most important, career advancement. While monetary compensation is essential to attract skilled workforce, it is equally important to give them a line of sight in to what the organization can do for them in terms of their professional development and growth. At Genpact, training and development are integral to this value proposition. Our consistently low level of employee attrition year after year is a testimonial to the success of this value proposition.

Ours is a young workforce and we understand their needs – both personal and professional. Ten years ago we launched a program called Education@Work, which allowed employees to enroll in to management courses and continue their education while working. Today, the Education@Work program boasts of 80 internationally acclaimed courses and 14,000 enrollments. The intent continues to empower working professionals with Best in Class Trainings and building a vast internal talent pool for Genpact.

Last year was a tough business year and most organizations were taking a placid approach to training and development. Genpact however, continued to strengthen its talent pool by investing over 40,000 hours of leadership development training for over 500 high performers to prime them for the next level. Our flagship programs like GOLD (Global Operations Leadership Program), HRLP (Human Resource Leadership Program), FMP (Financial Management Program) and IMLP (Information Management Leadership Program) are designed to build domain depth and provide individual career growth as each trainee undergoes rigorous training in their domain coupled with first hand project management experience and job rotations.

The reward and recognition programs are also a critical element to the total value proposition. We reward top performers in both monetary and non-monetary ways. We have fine tuned our rewards program to suite different employee demographics. The focus for middle and senior management is on high visibility, organization wide recognition and nominations to external forums, consortiums and seminars. The reward strategy for front line managers and operating teams, on the other hand, is to give instant performance rewards through our catalogue reward systems, peer to peer recognition platforms, et al.

A pertinent question in any high performing employees mind will be ’Where am I headed?’ An ideal performance management system should answer that before the question is tabled. Our performance management system allows the management to conduct a bi-annual talent assessment and succession planning for each employee and link it to their growth and career aspirations. This kind of timely performance evaluation provides the employee with the required feedback that can help them improve their individual development areas – some thing that employees actually look forward to!

The new generation of employees knows that true education is ‘on job’ and therefore an opportunity to change their role after every 2-3 years is both exciting and career enhancing to them. And that’s just what we offer. On an average, Genpact employees get a role change in roughly two years (lateral or vertical) depending on their performance and readiness. In 2009, we had over 6,000 promotions globally with numerous employees getting selected for global assignments and cross functional projects. We encourage high performers from line to move to domains like Six Sigma, Re-engineering, Transitions, Business Development, Training and Human Resources to provide a cross functional depth – an essential for every true leader.

We have leveraged on our technology to provide employee friendly work set ups like Work from Home. Employees who work on rule based processes (typically single contributors) enjoy the opportunity to work from home thereby maintaining a healthy work life balance. It’s priceless for those who dread long commutes and wish to balance their personal and professional responsibilities. For those who work from our offices, the environment is open, transparent and employee friendly. We encourage employees to participate in our corporate social responsibility programs to foster a sense of overall fulfillment.

Finally, employees today are looking for more than a loaded paycheck. More and more people are being driven to look at job changes not only from the perspective of increase in existing compensation but also the value proposition of the next employer. Organizations now need to look beyond their current offerings and incorporate the value proposition if they wish to compete in the talent market. From a first hand experience, managing employee satisfaction through total value proposition is far tougher than managing through traditional total rewards approach. The total value proposition approach has many levers that can impact employee satisfaction. So, as an organization we have to focus on all these levers and can not afford to neglect any.
 

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Topics: Compensation & Benefits, Employee Engagement, #TotalRewards

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