One of the challenges in compensation design and management is building programs that reward workers fairly, competitively and in ways that engage them in the success of the enterprise — without creating a sense of entitlement. Especially when it seems as though entitlement is hard-wired into our culture.
That’s why I read Whitney Johnson’s Harvard Business Review blog post Battling Entitlement, The Innovation Killer with such interest.
She speaks of all the ways we inadvertently reinforce that sense of entitlement — with our children, with our employees, even with our executives. And she points out that accountability, and the act of holding people accountable, is the direct opposite of entitlement. Then she shared a claim that really stood out for me, about innovation and about the downside of protecting people from limits and consequences
This got me to thinking. Practically speaking, our reward programs tend to be full of boundaries. Just a few examples:
The question is this: Are we positioning and communicating these boundaries in a way that empowers and emboldens employees? Are we presenting these limits in a way that inspires employees to accomplish the things necessary to move beyond them?
Could we do better?
See Ann Bares talk about A Look at How We Reward the Work of Today — and Tomorrow at TLNT’s Transform conference in Austin, TX Feb. 26-28, 2012. Click here for more information on attending this event.
This was originally published on Ann Bares’ Compensation Force blog.