Category Archives: Compensation

“Solid State” Compensation – Part 1

Posted on August 25, 2011 by

There’s an established tradition in the social sciences of borrowing ready-made concepts or equations from physics and other sciences. The most famous is the use of a heat equation in the Black-Scholes option pricing model. There’s a growing movement in … Continue reading →

Posted in Compensation, Workforce Planning | Leave a comment

Team Incentives and the Free Rider Problem

Posted on March 17, 2011 by

Team incentives, where an individual’s compensation is based on the team’s performance, are notoriously difficult to implement. Yet more and more work in companies large and small is being done through formal or informal teams. What do we need to … Continue reading →

Posted in Compensation, Incentives, Organization Design, Strategy | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Getting Started in Human Capital Analytics

Posted on March 7, 2011 by

Last week I attended the NCHRA (Northern California HR Association) HR Metrics and Analytics conference in Santa Clara, California.  There was a turnout of over 60 Bay Area HR professionals representing a number of diverse organizations. Based on the dialog at … Continue reading →

Posted in Analytics, Compensation, Statistics, Workforce Planning | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Rule of 72

Posted on February 28, 2011 by

Did you know that you can instantly calculate in your head the number of years that a quantity will double in, given its annual rate of growth? Picture yourself in a conference or discussion where, for example, someone says that … Continue reading →

Posted in Analytics, Compensation, Statistics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

“Unalytics” Awards – Nominee #1

Posted on February 25, 2011 by

The growing appetite for human capital analytics is drawing more professionals into the wider “market” for human capital analytics, including some players who ought to have done a little more homework. We hereby announce the Nelson Touch Consulting Awards for … Continue reading →

Posted in Analytics, Compensation, Incentives | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

It’s Probable: You Have a Chance

Posted on February 14, 2011 by

As HR professionals wrap their heads around predictive human capital analytics, one of the capabilities required will be a firm grasp of probability. Not just relevant probability theory, but a feel for the numbers as well. Why is this important? … Continue reading →

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A Comment on Pay Transparency

Posted on February 10, 2011 by

The following is a letter to the editor of HR Executive Magazine published in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue. As the article suggests, pay transparency is more than just revealing everyone’s pay. Rather than opening a Pandora’s box of emotions and unhealthy thoughts (“Ha – … Continue reading →

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Size Matters

Posted on February 2, 2011 by

In his Research for the Real World column in World at Work’s Workspan magazine, Kevin Hallock asserts that CEO pay is positively correlated with firm size, even when controlling for a number of other variables. Should we be surprised? I … Continue reading →

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Deeper into Box Plots

Posted on January 17, 2011 by

In the Behold the Box Plot post, we examined a simple box plot, which is good for most purposes. The version that most statisticians use, which I’ll call the statistical box plot has two additional features. The first, is to … Continue reading →

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Behold the Box Plot

Posted on January 7, 2011 by

Compensation professionals are constantly examining the distribution of data – e.g., the distribution of salaries, salary increases, bonus payouts, etc. While typically focused on quartiles and medians of the distribution, they recognize that they need to look at the entire … Continue reading →

Posted in Analytics, Compensation | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment