Strategic Human Resource Management (2 days)

Too often human resource management is relegated to the periphery of business strategy. Treated as if it were only a support function, concerned with shuttling people in and out of positions and accomplishing various necessary but non-critical formalities, HR often falls well short of its strategic potential. And yet, HR is arguably the most important single function of a business. Only a close alliance between top management and HR executives can bring about the changes needed to exploit the full potential of the work force.

This program begins not with the issue of HR policy, but with the more fundamental issue of what the organization needs its human resources to do: it begins with a needs assessment based on current core operations and new areas of foreseeable activity. The effort then, is not merely to improve and align what exists, but to create an HR strategy and management system that favours innovation and adaptive change.

Motivating Human Resources: Compensation, Benefits, and Incentives (2 days)

This program focuses on the impact of compensation, benefits and incentive systems on how well or poorly people perform on the job. It examines basic principles of reinforcement and satisfaction as they relate to improved performance, as well as the impact of various compensation schemes.

The program tests the rationales offered to justify such systems by looking at findings on how people actually perform under these systems. It distinguishes between three distinct outcomes that should be considered in judging such schemes:

1)    Attracting and retaining qualified people;

2)    Creating a positive “background environment” for performance; and

3)    Reinforcing targeted improvements in performance.

Because “reward” is always relative to other opportunities and to comparisons that employees make between their own outcomes and those that others inside and outside of the organization achieve, failure to develop a data-driven approach to compensation, benefits and incentives can produce envy and anger and result in a reduction in performance.

The program spends considerable time on fairness and “alignment” issues.

The goal of the course is to provide a research-based framework for developing compensation, benefits, and incentive systems that enhance crucial performances, and to do this in a way that relates to the individual participant’s specific challenges.