Reward management

Reward management is concerned with the formulation and implementation of strategies and policies that aim to reward people fairly, equitably and consistently in accordance with their value to the organization.

Reward management consists of analysing and controlling employee remuneration and all of the other benefits for the employees. Reward management aims to create and efficiently operate a reward structure for an organisation. Reward structure usually consists of pay policy and practices, salary and payroll administration, total reward, minimum wage, executive pay and team reward.

History
Reward management is a popular management topic. Reward management was developed on the basis of psychologists' behavioral research. Psychologists started studying behavior in the early 1900s; one of the first psychologists to study behavior was Sigmund Freud and his work was called the Psychoanalytic Theory. Many other behavioral psychologists improved and added onto his work. With the improvements in the behavioral research and theories, psychologists started looking at how people reacted to rewards and what motivated them to do what they were doing, and as a result of this, psychologists started creating motivational theories, which is very closely affiliated with reward management.

Objective
Reward management deals with processes, policies and strategies which are required to guarantee that the contribution of employees to the business is recognized by all means. Objective of reward management is to reward employees fairly, equitably and consistently in correlation to the value of these individuals to the organization. Reward system exists in order to motivate employees to work towards achieving strategic goals which are set by entities. Reward management is not only concerned with pay and employee benefits. It is equally concerned with non-financial rewards such as recognition, training, development and increased job responsibility.

Types of rewards
Rewards serve many purposes in organization, build a better employment deal, hold on good employees and to reduce turnover.

The principal goal is to increase people willingness to work in one’s company, to enhance their productivity.

Most people assimilate "rewards", with salary raise or bonuses, but this is only one kind of reward, Extrinsic reward. Studies proves that salespeople prefer pay raises because they feel frustrated by their inability to obtain other rewards, but this behavior can be modified by applying a complete reward strategy.

There are two kinds of rewards:
 * Extrinsic rewards: concrete rewards that employee receive.
 * Bonuses
 * Salary raise
 * Gifts
 * Promotion
 * Other kinds of tangible rewards
 * Intrinsic rewards: tend to give personal satisfaction to individual
 * Information / feedback
 * Recognition
 * Trust
 * Relationship
 * Empowerment
 * Monogrammed name plaque

Intrinsic rewards makes the employee feel better in the organization, while Extrinsic rewards focus on the performance and activities of the employee in order to attain a certain outcome. The principal difficulty is to find a balance between employees' performance (extrinsic) and happiness (intrinsic).

The rewards also needs to be according to the employee’s personality. For instance, a sports fan will be really happy to get some tickets for the next big match. However a mother who passes all her time with her children, may not use them and therefore they will be wasted.

When rewarding one, the manager needs to choose if he wants to rewards an Individual, a Team or a whole Organization. One will choose the reward scope in harmony with the work that has been achieved.


 * Individual
 * Base pay, incentives, benefits
 * Rewards attendance, performance, competence
 * Team: team bonus, rewards group cooperation
 * Organization: profit-sharing, shares, gain-sharing

Motivation theories


Motivational theories are split into two groups as process and content theories. Content theories endeavor to name and analyze the factors which motivate people to perform better and more efficiently while process theories concentrate on how different types of personal traits interfere and impact the human behavior. Content theories are highly related with extrinsic rewards, things that are concrete like bonuses and will help improve employees' physiological circumstances whereas process theories are concerned with intrinsic rewards, such as recognition and respect, which will help boost employees confidence in the work place and improve job satisfaction.

A famous content theory would be Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and a famous process theory would be the equity theory.

Job evaluation
Job evaluation is closely related to reward management. It is important to understand and identify a job's order of importance. Job evaluation is the process which job's are systematically assessed to one another within an organization in order to define the worth and value of the job. This system carries crucial importance for managers to decide which rewards should be handed out by what amount and to whom. Job evaluation provides the basis for grading, pay structure, grading jobs in the structure and managing job and pay relativities.

There also many different methods of job evaluation which can be used, but the three simplest methods are ranking, classification and factor comparison. However, there are more complex variations of methods.

Performance appraisal
Performance appraisal was set up in the first place, as a justification for the pay of an employee. If his performance was seen as insufficient, his pay would be cut down. However if it was seen of a higher quality, he could receive a pay rise. There are various appraisal methods.

Some of these include « rank and yank » by which an organisation ranks its employees against each other and terminates the employment of the employee who finishes at bottom place. That corresponds to the yanking. Then there is the critical incident technique by which the organisation collects information and observes human behaviour that have a strong impact either positive or negative on an activity or procedure.

Each employee is different and can bring in something special to the organisation. Each employee has a specific job to fulfil. Performance appraisals are needed in order to understand how every employee can produce the best performance.

The effectiveness of an employee is the key factor for the employer, because the profit the company or organisation makes depends on the employees' productiveness.
 * Improve performance: performance improvement is the notion of measuring the productivity of a certain procedure, and then finding solutions in order for the productivity to rise, the capability of the employees and their effectiveness.
 * Increase motivation: Performance appraisal is used as a motivation tool. An employee's efficiency can be proven if the targets he was set, have been achieved. The employee will be motivated to do even better and his performance will rise in the near future.
 * Identify training/development needs: The fundamental step of training and development is establishing the organisational needs for the employees at this time and in the near future. A few questions may be asked in the process: What can an employee learn in order to be more productive? In which field is training most necessary? And finally who should benefit from the training most?

The training and development needs should begin with an assessment of the company as it lies currently, how it operates and what each employee is best at. This assessment will enable the training to be based on certain factors which seem most important. Knowledge of the organisation's strategic plan and its needs for the future must help the training to bring the company up a step on the ladder.
 * Manage careers: career management . Managing your career efficiently involves a list of various factors which need to be referred to as often as possible: taking into account the goals you have giving yourself all along your professional career, allowing yourself to have a comfortable lifestyle and by feeling some level of personal accomplishment when you look back at to what you have done. These three factors are key to a productive career.