CommLog

When clients ask “What really communicates?” here’s our response (with the channels listed in descending order of their communicative potential): * Policy Decisions * Reward & Recognition Systems * What’s Being Said by Opinion Leaders in Informal Networks … and last of all, * Formal Internal Communications Our general advice: if you want to send a message, make a policy decision or change what you measure and reward. It appears the US government is slowly trying to apply this lesson, based on this Federal Times report: Is Merit Pay Worth the Risk? Experts Say Yes — If Agencies Get It Right. Unfortunately, members of Congress aren’t so certain the government can pull it off. From the article:

“Before the federal government can establish a true pay-for-performance system, we must ensure that a valid performance-management system exists,” said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, a leading voice for government reform in Congress. Voinovich and other lawmakers have argued in hearings that merit-pay systems are good in principle but difficult to design well. If designed and carried out poorly, they argue, merit-pay systems could create work forces that are embittered, demoralized and undermined rather than motivated, well-focused and high-performing … … In short, there are many critical ingredients that make a merit-pay system successful, experts say: well-planned incentives, performance goals and performance measures, fairness, buy-in from employees and managers, good communications, training for managers, effective internal grievance procedures, and money.

Of course, we’re a bit befuddled by the concern, given that most publicly-traded companies have used merit pay systems for decades. Nonetheless, this issue is an excellent example of an organization attempting to change cultural priorities and behavior by communicating through policy decisions, and is worth watching as an emerging case study.