Share the knowledge - March 2012

Like every month, here are some of the best or most relevant Compensation & Benefits, performance management, HR and/or global mobility articles that I came across recently :

• UK thinking of implementing caps to how long skilled migrants from outside the EU can work there, starting in 2016. Is the country moving towards visa management on a similar basis to KSA, or the GCC in general ?


• A very interesting article highlighting a recent study that challenges the notion of distribution curve in performance evaluation (you may need to be a member of SHRM to access this article).


• A short article from Donald Marron brought my attention to a March 2012 Harvard Business Review article from Mihir Desai, The Incentive Bubble, which challenges the fact that we should tightly link management compensation to financial market performance. As Marron summarises the article, "The problem is that incentive compensation based on financial performance does a lousy job of distinguishing skill from luck. In finance-speak, managers and investors often get rewarded for taking on beta, when their pay really ought to be linked to alpha. In practice, luck gets rewarded with undeserved windfalls (that are by no means offset by negative windfalls for the unlucky). And that, he , results in an important ”misallocation of financial, real, and human capital.” There are some strong reactions to the article, it is worth reading them too….


• EU Parliament votes in favour of binding female boardroom quotas


• Board representation and gender pay gap remain challenges for female employees (UK…but  applies anywhere)


• Understandably, a number of HR pros have reacted to the announcement of the first ever "official"  HR metric, which is cost-per-hire… and the second one would be a standard for job descriptions. Many argue that whole creating standards is good, the focus of HR should be on activities and metrics that are positioned higher in the value chain. This post from Howard Risher at TLNT provides convincing arguments.

For those of you who are interested in GCC and MENA articles, here are some regional pieces :

• An overview of the  (lack of) perceived pay fairness and motivation and engagement levels in the GCC, based on a recent Mercer study.


• Kuwait : new pay scales for "teachers" from March


• Even though this article covers Kuwait, I feel a lot of middle-class and lower-level expats would say the same in many GCC countries :


• Saudi-GOSI approves 15% increase on basic allowance of pension payments as of March 2012.


• Headhunter publishes compensation information for the Oil & Gas industry, finds Nigeria the place with highest salaries for Western expats


• Some interesting tips for compensation survey participation in the smaller Middle East and Africa markets, or super niche industries - straight from Warren Heaps at International HR Forum : Salary Survey Insanity in Small Markets - Are you looking for the wrong data ?

Best of the rest :

• Cole Nussbaum does it once again ! After her post on How to do it in Excel which I re-published recently, she writes another excellent piece which compensation managers can apply immediately to their presentations. Check her methodology to better visuals in Lessons from GMN.


• Here is a podcast dated March 23rd from Stephanie Thomas at The Proactive Employer. In HR metrics : what you're tracking and why nobody cares, she covers "the three levels of HR metrics, why your company executives really only care about one type, and how to present those metrics to management so they understand how you are helping to move the organization forward". Really worth listening to !