Merging Disciplines:
Behavior and Compensation Management
Behavior managers and compensation planners share much in common. Both sets of motivational specialists advocate the alignment of pay with performance to more effectively achieve company goals and reward employees for their contributions. Through decades of testing reinforcement principles, behavior management provides us proven methods to teach and motivate employees. Leading edge compensation planners use these methods, along with years of experience evaluating large-scale compensation programs, to develop new and innovative variable pay plans for the enterprise.
Since the late 1980s, compensation professionals have advocated the pay for performance concept in various forms. Tom Wilson, Jay Schuster, Patricia Zingheim, John Belcher, Edward Lawler and Howard Risher are just a few of the pioneers leading the next wave of compensation planning. New variable pay models represent a creative and necessary departure from antiquated compensation plans that have been relatively static since the 1960s.
During the past 10 years compensation planners have shown a great willingness to integrate behavior management into corporate pay plans. After numerous replications of organizational behavior research, compensation planners increasingly implement incentive plans based on reinforcement principles (see Quotes).
Innovative incentive plans, such as new variable pay, team variable pay and group variable pay, and skill and competency variable pay, incorporate principles of reinforcement. Leading edge compensation planners also advocate pay for performance plans where team, group and unit goals align with overall company goals, such as economic valuation, to produce greater financial returns to all participants.
Moving into the 21st century, behavior and compensation management will continue to merge incentive practices. However, joining them are emerging technologies — eLearning and knowledge management — also focusing on greater efficiencies for corporations, their employees and customers. Working together in the enterprise, professionals from these four disciplines will help corporate executives and HR professionals build new business performance systems for the enterprise. The organizational change team will apply reinforcement and learning principles to advance new technologies integrating creative variable pay, online training and knowledge management systems for the New Workplace.