Pay People Right!: Breakthrough Reward Strategies to Create Great Companies (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series) [Hardcover]

Jay R. Schuster (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 078794016X | ISBN-13: 978-0787940164 | Publication Date: January 2000 | Edition: 1st

Widely recognized as the nation's foremost experts on pay strategies, Zingheim and Schuster offer up a nuts-and-bolts guide on how a company can use pay to create a win-win partnership with its workforce. Their advice is direct and specific and will help you tackle many of today's most critical business issues from attracting and retaining talent to motivating sales staffs to improving mergers and acquisitions. Charged with readily usable tools for successfully implementing pay change, Pay People Right! also contains numerous examples of how many top organizations are creating total rewards packages that engage people and enhance performance.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

With all that has been written about organizational change, improving performance, and increasing productivity, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role that compensation plays in those efforts. Zingheim and Schuster, who are partners in a benefits consulting firm and the authors of The New Pay: Linking Employee and Organizational Performance (1992), address the issue of pay head-on. Their overriding theme is that compensation systems must be in alignment with a company's strategic goals and that "pay is a powerful communicator of values and directions." To correct common misalignments, they introduce the concept of "total rewards" and examine six reward principles. They explain that base pay should be a reward for individual ongoing value, contrast short-term and long-term variable pay as rewards for performance, and emphasize the importance of recognizing and celebrating success. They also address special situations such as rewards for teams, sales achievement, scarce talent, and key executives, and they look at the effects of mergers and acquisitions and globalization on pay systems. David Rouse

Review

"A thoroughly up-to-the minute explanation of the best thinking on pay practices by two extraordinary well qualified experts. What could be of greater value? At last a readable book that provides answers to today's trickiest pay issues." --Jack Zenger, president, PROVANT Inc., and co-author of Results-Based Leadership, Leading Teams, and Self-Directed Work Teams

"Zingheim and Schuster have done it again! They have produced a second must-read book on pay. Pay People Right! is full of useful information about how to create and manage pay systems that fit today's organizations. More than just a how to do it approach, it provides a business basis for the development of key pay strategies which can provide a competitive advantage." --Edward E. Lawler III, director, Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California, and author of From the Ground Up and Rewarding Excellence

"Pay People Right! offers practical, forward thinking, and useful advice on how to design and deliver compensation systems to get results. The book has been invaluable to me in clarifying my thinking and is a must read for managers, HR professionals, consultants, and others who craft reward systems. I use it in teaching our executive program." --Dave Ulrich, University of Michigan professor, author of Human Resource Champions, and co-author of Results-Based Leadership

"Zingheim and Schuster have written a first-rate book on reward systems. It is reader-friendly, original and practical. What's most impressive is how they demonstrate the effect of pay on mergers, team performance as well as performance measures in general plus providing some useful lessons on pay systems during times of hyper-turbulent change. If the lessons of this book are thoughtfully applied, improved organizational effectiveness will follow." --Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California, and co-author of Co-Leaders

"Pay People Right! is a must read for those who wrestle with the dynamic and critical challenge of using pay to help get better results from the workforce. It provides practical solutions for achieving a balance between workforce fulfillment and peformance." --Jon R. Katzenbach, founder of Katzenbach Partners LLC, author of Teams at the Top and coauthor of The Wisdom of Teams

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 388 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078794016X
• ISBN-13: 978-0787940164
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,001,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive. Thorough., July 17, 2000

By 

Roger E. Herman (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pay People Right!: Breakthrough Reward Strategies to Create Great Companies (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series) (Hardcover)

In today's increasingly competitive employment market, compensation is a powerful part of the package used to attract and hold top talent. Although recent research has confirmed that money is not as dominant a factor as it has been in the past, there is no denying that the Almighty Dollar still plays a central role.

If compensation is not designed properly, an organization could be dangerously vulnerable to attack from the raiding recruiters who do know how to do it right. Thus, pay plans become a vital defense as well as a powerful attracting offensive tool. The problem is that many employers, including human resource professionals, don't have a sufficient understanding of how-and why-to pay people appropriately.

Pay People Right serves as a fine textbook for those who want to gain a deeper understanding of the right ways to reward employees financially for their contributions. As the authors observe in their preface, "Much of the popular literature on management and organizational change avoids issues of pay, perhaps because it's harder to address than many gentler and less powerful change tools the literature proposes. Changing pay requires patience and constant attention." They contend that compensation design-pay and other rewards-can influence worker performance to the extent that it can change a company's achievement and destiny. Zingheim and Schuster suggest that compensation is even more of a strategic tool than it has been in the past, particularly in these times of mergers and acquisitions, consolidations, and globalization

Organization

The book is well-organized for a read-through as well as for reference at a later date. The first chapter addresses Total Rewards and the Six Reward Principles. The principles begin with Create a Positive and Natural Reward Experience. The key is communication and education. The next principle is to align rewards with business goals to create a win-win partnership. People who work for the company add value, which should be rewarded.

We should ensure that everyone is a knowledgeable stakeholder in the overall success of the company. That's the third principle: Extend people's line of sight. The fourth principle is Integrate Rewards: move beyond total pay to include total rewards. Fifth, reward individual ongoing value with base pay. Evaluate competency, performance, and the employee's value in the marketplace. I like the sixth principle: reward results with variable pay-flexiblity, agility, responsiveness.

The authors emphasize the four components of total rewards: individual growth, compelling future, total pay, and positive workplace. It's not just the money. This comprehensive approach leads to a broader strategy.

The second chapter makes the business case for changing rewards, leading to chapter on integrating total pay. The chapter on measuring and managing performance completes the first section of the book, focusing on compensation being a vital part of performance management.

The second part of the book addresses a wide range of pay tools including base pay, short-term and long-term variable pay, and recognition and celebration. The discussion on infrastructure helps the reader understand the foundation of how compensation is designed.

Part III of Pay People Right addresses how rewards are used in several different situations. Readers learn how to reward teams, scarce talent, sales professionals, and executives. In this section the authors address how rewards are used in merger and acquisition situations and in the complicated world of globalization. Chapter 15 on Global Rewards is particularly valuable for employers concerned with compensating people from different countries doing different kinds of work under different conditions. The exploration of global talent as a specific focus was enlightening . . . and, importantly, current.

The book is practical in its approach. Theory is translated effectively into practice so the textbook becomes a useful handbook, as well. The index works-I checked a number of issues and questions of interest-to help the reader find specifics to answer questions and get the job done.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" reading guide !, February 26, 2000

By 

Turgay BUGDACIGIL (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pay People Right!: Breakthrough Reward Strategies to Create Great Companies (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series) (Hardcover)

"Pay People Right! defines", Zingheim and Schuster write, "the leading and communicating role of pay in business performance. Pay enjoys a critical role in helping companies and people enhance their performance. A number of important tools are available to improve pay design. We describe how people can add value and how your company get from where it is now to where it would like to be."

In this context Zingheim and Schuster :

* define the six reward principles that provide consistency of purpose and direction for the diverse pay topics.

* describe how an enterprise's business situation, business strategy, human resources strategy, and total reward strategy drive the business case for changing rewards.

* discuss the importance of the total reward picture in determining a firm's competitiveness in the labor market.

* discuss how business strategy and goals can best drive rewards to be successful.

* define the concept of paying individual's ongoing value along three dimensions : (1) skills and competencies that the individual uses to get results, (2) the individual's consistent performance over time, and (3) the individual's value relative to the labor market.

* review alternative structures for base pay, including grades and ranges, market rates, broad grades, and career bands.

* discuss both cash-based and stock-based long-term variable pay as a reward tool not only for executives but also for key people, wherever they are in the firm.

* discuss team reward design and the issues surrounding the move to team pay.

* discuss reward strategies for scarce talents, salesforce and executives.

* discuss the role of total pay during the turmoil of mergers and acquisitions.

* discuss results of globalization, as unique total reward opportunities.

I highly recommend this invaluable study to executives, managers, human resources and compensation professionals.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great treatment of a difficult subject, March 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Pay People Right!: Breakthrough Reward Strategies to Create Great Companies (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series) (Hardcover)

Everyone has an opinion on pay, but no one brings the depth of experience and level of insight to this subject the way these two authors do. Surveying the entire complex issue of how to pay people in a way that is fair and effective for the both the firm and the individual, Schuster and Zingheim have provided a practical road map that is easy for anyone to follow who really wants to "pay people right". If every manager in every company would read, digest, and act upon their advice much of the disfunction that plagues the workplace would be eliminated. A great book, and a great service to everyone.