Phil
FYI, we (Hercules Incorporated) are entering our third year of operating
our exempt salaried pay systems under a broadbanding system. We have 5
bands across the entire corporation with the breakdown approximately 40%
in B1, 40% in B2, 10% in B3, 5% in B4, and 5% in B5. Originally, we were
asked to deemphasize titles and focus on accountabilities,
responsibilities, competencies, and growth. The intent was to remove
barriers (real and perceived) that might prevent people from gaining
experience in jobs which were not in their traditional developmental path
or might have even derailed them from their desired path before. I am
personally familar with a few times we took advantage of this, but for the
most part we have not yet fully utilized broadbanding's potential. I
attribute this to the fact that we are still very early in the learning
curve.
We consider a promotion as a move from one band to the next, and expect
that this will be considered a big deal since it will only occur once or
twice in most people's career. We have another thing we call progressions
which recognize an employees contribution advancements within a band.
These are not limited, but generally would be between 3 and 5 within a
single band.
Perhaps one of the greates "losses" experienced by employees in BB is the
lost significance of job titles. However, just because we said titles
weren't important in BB definitely did not make it so. Titles continue to
convey significant meaning and value to most employees. We have been
pretty relaxed about what people put on their business cards, and we
really haven't addressed titles in our pay systems either. I believe we
are migrating to 2 "official" titles per job function within a single
band, but the jury is still out on this. Anyone implementing BB needs to
recognize just how significant and traumatic this part can be.
>From a manager's perspective, BB does give us flexibility in administering
the pay systems, but like anything else, it is also open for abuse if
guidelines aren't consistently followed by everyone. It also puts a lot
more emphasis on accountabilities and subjective appraisals since jobs are
no longer narrowly defined, so I am working toward a 360 degree review
process to at leats provide developmental guidance and hopefull to one day
provide performance feedback. We are also considering several options on
implementing some form of gainsharing as a means of driving personal
commitment and making our employees larger owners. This will probbably
happen soon, but we are going slow on purpose to try and make it work
right out of the box.
I did a quick Yahoo search and saw a ton of broadbanding stuff on the net,
so I won't even try to point you anywhere for published materials - you
can probably find your way much better than I anyway. Just a closing note
from someone who works under and administers a broadbanding system - its
not perfect but its not so bad either. I would definitely not want to go
back to the Hay system we used before.
Gerald Burch (gdburch@netdoor.com)
plant manager, Hercules, Hattiesburg, MS
Phil Potter wrote:
> I am a newbie to this list. Part of the reason for joining was to obtain
> information about broadbanding. Can anyone direct me to a list, a URL, or
> any other source of information on broadbanding or carreer bands?
--Gerald Burch <gdburch@netdoor.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>