Rewards strategy for Indian organisations

Globalisation has become the biggest word in the business and economic jargon in the past decade or more. However, while we speak about it in a holistic and macro level context, often we do not replicate this phenomenon into basic people processes such as rewards.

Indian MNCs have shown an increase in number as well as expanded their operations by acquisitions. The direct impact of this has been the absence or lack of awareness on how to create a global rewards strategy. We are able to identify local compensation elements in any market that we operate in, look for compensation benchmark data and identify what to pay for which role, in terms of market competitiveness. What we are unable to do are the following:

• Determine a global rewards approach that a diverse set of employees understand.
• Drive a performance-oriented rewards strategy that includes the values and motivation factors applicable to individuals in various markets.
• Communicate the overall organisational rewards framework or philosophy particularly the non-financial and intrinsic elements in a manner that all employees believe in it.

There might be several other aspects of their global rewards approach that Indian firms need to work on but the above three are primary in terms of their impact and application. Some steps to address this gap as rewards practitioners are:

• Gain deep and comprehensive insights into what different employees value: Our usual strategy of assessing monetary compensation against market benchmarks and applying it based on our pay percentile principles will not apply when we talk about global rewards. This will encompass all aspects that form rewards as a basket whether those are related to any of these three Ps - people practices, policies or processes. So as rewards practitioners we need to gauge whether our policies reflect our defined culture, our practices are linked to our values and if our processes are designed to reward desired employee behaviours. Here are some examples for us to mull over - if being inclusive as a manager and team member is a core organisational value does our reward & recognition practice demonstrate that? If we promote a culture of high performance do we have suitable but unified policies across our locations which are bias-free and transparently implementedin order to reward the right employees, in the right way?

When we answer these questions, we get a little closer to understanding what our diverse segment of employees want. Our role is not to create multiple reward structures and segmentise the organisation - our role is to understand how to balance similar and different motivators from a rewards perspective, for our various groups of employees and create a flexible and agile structure.

n Keep informed about new rewards tools: As Indian organisations grow larger and establish their geographic footprint, there is a need for the rewards practitioners to be more cognizant, aware and attuned to new ways and means of rewarding employees. Working with a robust existing framework is great, but being able to add to that in a manner that it makes the framework more future focused is imperative. Information flows at supersonic speed today. Your employees will know of these new approaches possibly faster than you will, as they exchange ideas and thoughts with peers (even virtually) from across the world. Therefore such rewards know-how will help you understand the viability and feasibility of those approaches in your organisation's context.

---

The author is Simran Oberoi, an independent HR consultant. Re-printed with permission.
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/2014 0903054123-23076946-global-rewards-strategy-for-indian-organizations?trk=prof-post