Innovative Compensation Model: Consumer Products

Using compensation to drive performance and career development at a consumer products company

Client Case Study

Situation

This major consumer product manufacturer was experiencing problems with a pay grade structure that over the years had become too inflexible to accommodate their multiple plant locations and evolving talent strategies.

Complications

The current pay structure produced several problems:

  • Frustrated employees perceived that only job promotions ensured salary growth.
  • The employer realized that not all individuals sought management roles, eliminating promotions as a viable incentive.
  • Those in professional and technical occupations, such as engineers, wanted upward mobility within their field without becoming managers.

Approach

  1. Analysis: Conducted an in-depth analysis of the growing needs of the manufacturer
  2. Design: Developed an innovative compensation model that collapsed the large number of pay grades into a few wide bands, each representing a different level in the company hierarchy.

Results

  • This solution provided an alternative to the up or out mentality that was formerly associated with their system.
  • The new compensation program encouraged cross-training by motivating employees to move laterally.
  • Employees gained new skills and increased their earning potential without being promoted in the traditional sense.
  • The increased flexibility and latitude within the salary bands empowered managers to reward and retain high performing individuals, and addressed geographic differentials without requiring customized pay decisions for each region of the country.
  • Managers soon gained more independence within the guidelines of the new system to reward key performers and critical skill sets. Employees gained the ability to learn new skills outside their traditional roles and were rewarded without the pressure to earn a grade level promotion.

Related Information

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Margaret M. Mader
Vice President, Human Resources

Hyperion

As a Training Outsourcing Partner, LSA consistently saves me time and money by understanding what matters to our strategy and what works in our unique culture.

Their practical and outcome-oriented methodology is fantastic and allows us to deploy better solutions faster.

I highly recommend them to anyone looking to raise the talent bar with a true strategic partner.

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Director of Training and Organizational Development

Dimension Data

The refreshing thing about LSA is that they focus on understanding our business situation and helping me succeed instead of selling stuff. Their experts are an invaluable resource that help me deliver higher quality results faster. I recommend them to anyone looking to improve the performance of their workforce.

Stacie Rodgers
VP of Human Resources

Cutera

We partnered with LSA Global to help us invest in our people. LSA custom designed an impactful management curriculum to help upskill our key managers and leaders.

We consider LSA to be our trusted learning and development partner and a valued extension of our team as we rapidly scale.  Thank you LSA!

Lisa Bruun
SVP Human Resources

Ellie Mae

Thank you! Your learning strategy insights flipped our approach from a content-driven design to one where business strategy and relevancy drives the leadership programs we aimed to redesign.

This investment more than proved its worth – not only did it improve our leadership development program redesign, but it also was like a mini executive seminar that stretched our experienced L&D team’s thinking.

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Senior Director Talent Management

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LSA Global has been a great partner in helping us move toward being “the leading developer of talent in the service performance management industry.”

I have engaged LSA to help develop best-in-class programs in the areas of: Executive On-boarding, Manager Training, Sales Training and Coaching, Employee Engagement, and Instructional Design.

They have consistently met or exceeded my (very) high expectations and are always responsive to my needs to increase performance, engagement, customer satisfaction, and sales growth.

Mike Normant
Senior Director, Training & Development

Service Source

I’m not sure if I’ve run across a company that can match the depth and quality of LSA’s consultants and facilitators.

I highly recommend LSA to anyone seeking a trusted training, coaching, and consulting partner to improve performance – at both a tactical and strategic level.

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VP Human Resources

Exelixis

The experiential New Employee Orientation was an incredible success for 2,500+ new hires over 4 years spread across the globe.

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We could never have done it without their unmatched combination of expertise, professionalism, and creativity that aligned everything with our unique culture and growth strategy.

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Brenda Wagner
Founder and President

Proxicom

Having a training outsourcing partner like LSA to support our talent management needs has been a real blessing. In an emerging company where typically you can’t afford the infrastructure necessary to provide a full range of offerings, having an external partner like LSA has been a blessing.

They deeply understand our business and our culture.   They do a great job on a wide range of customized training, consulting, and coaching solutions for us.

For us, they are definitely better than having our own internal Training and Organizational Development function.  They always do what it takes to hit the mark.

Chris Wells
Vice President, HR and IT

LSA asks the hard questions, listens, and understands both our business and talent needs.

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Kristin Westland-Kaune
Director, Team Development

LSA’s action-learning leadership approach has been very beneficial to me, our leadership team, and the entire organization.

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We have made huge progress, and I was also able to identify 2-3 high potentials while having the extra benefit of people stepping up to carry key strategic projects forward.

The experience was better than anticipated.  I could not be more pleased.

Heather Feltman
President & CEO

LSS

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The practical, no-nonsense, and outcome-oriented approach really helped us all get on the same page and set us up to be a high performing leadership team to focus on what matters most.

Michael Carter
VP Human Resources

Samsung

We partnered with LSA to help custom design, deliver, and measure an advanced new employee on-boarding process. It was well thought out and bought into by sales leadership.  The combination of targeted sales tools, technology, coaching, performance plans, training, and reinforcement made all the difference.  The solution quantifiably improved new employee and hiring manager satisfaction and increased the speed to sales quota for new hires.

I would highly recommend LSA Global for any sales enablement team looking to increase the engagement and speed to productivity of their sales force. We are excited to implement the program globally as we continue to scale.

Rochana Golani
Director, Global Sales & Technical Field Enablement

We looked to LSA Global as a consulting partner to help us explore innovative and scholarly approaches to promote employee engagement and sustain the unique culture we’ve built over the last decade.  LSA helped us perpetuate coaching as a discipline across the organization by integrating our core values, goal setting, and performance management.

We appreciate LSA’s commitment to cutting-edge practices to help keep us a step ahead during this time of rapid change.

Rosalyn Chan
Vice President, Human Resources

Redwood Trust

We have worked with LSA Global for our learning and development needs and have always had great success.

They helped us recently with targeted and customized Management Training Workshops to fit our unique situation, and they were fantastic.

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Mary Johnston
HR Manager, BU Radiology Informatics

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