In a post-pandemic world with high inflation and globalization, many CHROs are being pressured to rethink how they are compensating their employees. Many are shifting to a “total rewards” mindset to gain and retain top talent. Chris Sinclair, Bayard’s Chief People + Culture Officer, shares his insights about this challenge.
“The framing of compensation as the combination of salary, bonus, and retirement was already on the way out in recent years thanks to the pressures of globalization and technological disruption, and the pandemic has decisively made it a thing of the past. With inflation on the rise—so much for transitory—and wages rising along with it, CHROs are facing conditions that have not been seen for decades. The problem has become particularly acute because ‘in the pandemic, a lot of companies took their foot off the gas in terms of bringing talent into their organizations, especially companies that are a bit more reactive,’ says Chris Sinclair, Chief People Officer at Bayard Advertising. ‘Then, as the economy flipped and things have gone back into high gear, everybody needs to build things back up and they need to find talent.’ It has created ‘a massive supply and demand issue,’ Sinclair argues.”
“At many companies, this evolution toward total rewards thinking has happened incredibly quickly. Sinclair likens the change in mindset to the shift to e-commerce during the pandemic which ‘grew 10 years of the space of six months.’ Because of the speed of change, CHROs need to be careful to make sure they are constantly benchmarking, gathering information about the market and what their employees need, and that their policies are shaped to what their company actually needs right now. There’s no one size fits all strategy. Some CHROs ‘are going to lean more on the cash compensation than maybe career progression and culture, and that’s fine,’ he says. ‘They just have to do that with the awareness that there are going to be a lot more candidates who are not going to want that job.'”
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