Overview:
A growing consumer products company with significant growth potential in the Indian market had two specific challenges. One was to solve for low offer to joining ratio and a high infant attrition. The other challenge was to drive alignment between demonstrated behaviours of the sales organization and the operating roadmap of the company.
To address this, the company engaged in a rewards re-design and incentive realignment work to solve the talent attraction and retention problem as well as align the sales team with the company’s goals.
The work was divided into two tracks over a period of three and a half months.
Parameters:
Problem: a) Struggling to attract (very low interview to offer and then offer to joinee conversion) and retain talent (significantly high infant attrition), b) misalignment between sales team behaviour and company goals
Solution: TA/ Hiring Compensation diagnostic and re-design and incentive realignment
Benefits: 25% improvement in hiring (conversion ratio), and alignment between sales team and company goals, increased sales performance
Stakeholders: Company leadership, HR, Sales team
Implementation: Data analysis, employee surveys, communication plan, incentive policy redesign, TA training
Solution:
To optimize the post-merger integration process and ensure a seamless transition, we start with collaboration and engagement aspects. Then move to focus on key areas such as customer unification, competency alignment, policy and process harmonization, application consolidation and then building for scale: build as well as buy capabilities and capacities.
In phase II, we also draw up a unified organization design along with building the foundation for scaling a performance-driven organization.
Details:
Track 1: Structurally Solve for Talent Attraction and Retention
The first track of the work focused on structurally solving the talent attraction and retention problem. We did some deep work to understand the competition, employee value proposition, and compensation benchmarking. This involved data analysis, employee surveys, and benchmarking against other companies in the industry. The goal was to understand how the company’s compensation package compared to others in the industry, skills, structure and to identify areas for improvement.
Based on the data analysis and surveys, key areas for improvement were identified in its compensation instrument design. The People Equation team worked along with the C&B team to redesign the compensation package to make it more competitive and attractive to potential employees. This included a focus on salary, benefits, and incentives.
Track 2: Align Sales Team with Company Goals and Redesign Incentive Policy
The second track of the work focused on aligning the sales team with the company’s goals and redesigning the incentive policy. The CEO, Sales Leaders and People Equation worked together to review the alignment between what the company wanted and the behavior on the ground from the sales team. The goal was to identify any misalignments and to work to address them. This was done in a workshop format.
Based on this review, the incentive policy was redesigned to better align with the company’s goals. This involved a focus on incentives that encouraged behaviors that were aligned with the company’s strategy and goals. Along the way, changes were made to the target setting process, review of the sales scorecard, stretch goal alignment between sales plan and finance plan, linking base and stretched goals to a reward slope of payment as finally the governance and regularity of payment.
Workshops, open communication channels, being at the customer site, disagreeing but committing are some of the key levers that helped in the process.
There is a plan to review progress on both the tracks on a quarterly basis and make amendments wherever necessary.
