Cultivating Talent with Sustainability-Based Incentives

Many believe we are fast approaching a turning point towards economic recovery, yet most businesses will be emerging from these leaner times resource limited. As a result, engaging and motivating the organization will become even more critical to drive efficient productivity.

Talent management encompasses the entire spectrum of sourcing, attracting, developing, retaining, and measuring the performance of organizational talent. Our sustainability consulting has observed talent management leaders utilizing progressive measures to meet employee interests and ensure business sustainability alignment across the organization.

So what do current and prospective employee’s want?

•    Employees want rewarding and meaningful work
•    Employees want to make a difference
•    Employees want growth and development opportunities

And let’s not forget about pay! Traditionally the underlying objective of a compensation structure has been to attract and retain quality staff. With the need to get more from today’s workforce, payment structures have to do more.

With the myriad of compensation strategies available, how can you be assured your structure is driving the right behavior? Performance pay is a structure that provides bonus pay based on certain performance criteria. It is a widely used in particular industries, based on the concept that pay can motivate job performance, increase employee effectiveness, and align business goals. Research suggests that pay can do this when it's linked to actual performance. This model offers several potential advantages:

•    Ties compensation to performance
•    Rewards the right behaviors and builds business sustainability alignment.
•    Encourages leadership and self-management
•    Encourages innovation

Our professional consulting realizes that there is no one a single incentive structure right for all business. However linking compensation to specific sustainability concepts, businesses have the potential to align the sustainability goals of the organization and motivate behavior.