EIM and SPM system and related commentary presented by Canidium

Travel Costs: Incent to Save?

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 | Compensation Plans, EIM, Goal setting, SPM, bonus | No Comments

An article in Thursday’s US Today focuses on how companies are determining the necessity of business travel. Corporate travel experienced cuts in recent years in reaction to economic conditions with every expense item receiving more scrutiny than in boom times. On the other hand many will vehemently espouse the idea that downturns are no time to cut sales and marketing budgets. The article sites that business travel in Q1 2010 is up from Q4 2009 and also year over year versus Q1 2009; this is definitely a good economic indicator. › Continue reading

Merced and Canidium announce upcoming ICM Webinar: Solution Assessment and Road Mapping

Monday, April 12th, 2010 | EIM, Merced, Project Direction, SPM | No Comments

Canidium and partner Merced Systems will host a webinar at noon Eastern / 9:00 A.M. Pacific on Tuesday, May 11th. The key speakers will be Canidium Principal Consultant (and frequent Alpha Comp contributor), Jason Kearns, and Merced’s VP of Business Consulting, Matthew Katz. Kearns and Katz will be discussing the classic progression of incentive compensation automation within organizations including how organizations can assess their current process and effectively road map for future success. Those who will most benefit from attending include sales VPs, IT directors, compensation managers and other compensation and sales professionals. More information and registration is available here.

Goals under attack!

Friday, January 15th, 2010 | Compensation Plans, Goal setting | No Comments

Heard an interesting piece on NPR this evening (transcript here). One of the participants, Lisa Ordonez, a management professor at the University of Arizona was citing some examples of what she calls “Goals Gone Wild.” Here is what Ordonez had to say about a corporate goal of GM’s to achieve 29 percent market share:

And this led to, for them, a focus away from profitability. And to achieve this goal myopically. Now I’m not going to say that that goal was the entire downfall of GM, but obviously strict adherence to goals can cause these kinds of problems.

Also in the piece Ordonez describes how parental incentives to their school aged children to achieve all A’s have lead to “unethical behavior like cheating on an exam or having someone write a paper for you.” Something to think about I suppose. What bothered me about the story was the sentiment that goals are bad by nature. I didn’t catch the title of the story until I went looking for the transcript –”It’s not always good to create goals.” Yes, the title seems to support that sentiment.
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The Perfect Gift, a Christmas Bonus

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 | SPM, bonus | No Comments

In recent years the “Christmas Bonus” has been a species in decline. Once an American staple, it went out of favor for a couple of reasons.

First, you couldn’t call it the Christmas Bonus anymore if you wanted to be politically correct. And unfortunately, “Year End Bonus” or “Holiday Bonus” just doesn’t have the same cache with most of us.

Second, and more importantly, the argument began amongst compensation professionals that an obligatory bonus at the end of the year doesn’t really affect behavior. The goal of compensation is to incent employees’ performance. If they get a bonus every year just for showing up, where’s the motivation?
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