For the past 90 years or so, job evaluation as a compensation tool has been desi
ID: 2756570 • Letter: F
Question
For the past 90 years or so, job evaluation as a compensation tool has been designed to assess the value of each job rather than to evaluate the person doing the job, prompting a relatively flat pay schedule for all incumbents in a particular position. Some HR experts believe that the emerging trend is for pay inequality to become “normal.” Employers are using variable pay to lavish financial resources on their most prized employees, creating a kind of corporate star system. “How do you communicate to a workforce that isn’t created equally? How do you treat a workforce in which everyone has a different deal?” asks Jay Schuster of Los Angeles– based compensation consultants Schuster- Zingheim & Associates, Inc. If you were asked these questions, how would you answer them? Given the issues just discussed in this case, what effect do you think this trend toward greater pay inequality will have on employees’ satisfaction with their pay, their job, and life in general? Explain.
Explanation / Answer
Communicating to a workforce that isn’t created equally
Diversity & Workplace Communication
Diversity and Workplace Communication examines the communication challenges created by the rapidly changing demographics of our communities and workplaces. Our backgrounds are so different that in fact, most communication takes place across cultural lines.Assumptions and boundaries are examined and communication skills are strengthened through personal histories, self-assessments and communication exercises. Gaining knowledge and acquiring skills that allow the opening of inter-cultural dialogue and discussion of sensitive issues with co-workers, neighbors and friends has become essential to our future.
High and sustained levels of inequality, especially inequality of opportunity can entail large social costs. Entrenched inequality of outcomes can significantly undermine individuals’ educational and occupational choices. Further, inequality of outcomes does not generate the “right” incentives if it rests on rents . In that event, individuals have an incentive to divert their efforts toward securing favored treatment and protection, resulting in resource misallocation, corruption, and nepotism, with attendant adverse social and economic consequences. In particular, citizens can lose confidence in institutions, eroding social cohesion and confidence in the future.