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November 2004
Greg Hope- A rewarding career!
Greg Hope is a highly experienced HR specialist- who has the
honour of being Interregna’s longest-running placement.
More of that later, but suffice it to say his career ranges from
British Leyland back in the 1970’s and major financial
institutions such as Bank of America and Standard Chartered Bank
more recently. An economics graduate and Fellow of the Chartered
Institute of Personal Development, Greg became an interim manager
for personal reasons: “Having left a major consulting firm
at 52, I really did not fancy going through the recruitment round
and joining another employer. I became a consultant first, and
then an interim to see how it went… It affords me a great
variety of work across different types of businesses. I also
get to meet and work with a variety of people, especially within
HR, which is challenging and fun”. When he’s not
working, Greg can be found renovating his new gite in central
France, apparently water-skiing on a local lake there, and improving
his Excel skills (useful for working out benefits packages…),
though not at the same time.
Interregna’s longest commission
 We ought to qualify that Greg’s record-breaking
three-year interim placement had started out as three-to-six
months. The
role was to be challenging; managing the movement of some staff
from a government-funded enterprise into a global joint venture,
hiring new staff and handling some redundancies too. There were
extensive international HR and reward issues, with around 100
employees across 12 locations in Latin America, Africa and the
Far East. All required annual pay reviews and incentive schemes.
These intricate but finite projects are of
course ideal for the attentions of a good interim manager,
and Greg was drafted
in. Yet as each project ended, another came into view: “The
compensation manager resigned, so I was asked to stay on to handle
compensation administration for probably another six months.” Greg
handled salary surveys, pay reviews and the annual bonus cycle,
and as the structure of the company underwent radical change
from the summer of 2002, handled a workload of line HR as well
as his stock-in trade of project implementation. “It was
only after I had my first leaving party – I eventually
had three – that my ‘interim’ status became
well known. My ‘leaving’ in fact rapidly became an
internal joke!”
As well as his obvious project successes, Greg lists among his
achievements being accepted by Directors and staff as more of
an employee than just a temporary or interim executive; not of
course only for his lengthy stay, but because of his commitment
to the goals of the company.
Hot issues in HR
Greg summarises the nature of remuneration in typically simple
and self-effacing fashion: ensuring staff are sufficiently well
rewarded to avoid recruitment, retention and motivation problems.
This requires constant monitoring of remuneration against competitors
through surveys and consultancy feedback. Then:
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incentive schemes, both
annual and long-term must be developed which are sufficient
to motivate staff |
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deferral arrangements are needed to
ensure staff are ‘locked-in’ to the business
and suffer financially if they leave |
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and all these may need to be expressed
in the provision of flexible remuneration structures to
meet key individuals’ personal requirements |
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… again to ensure they are motivated
to stay with the firm and to stretch themselves to contribute
significantly to corporate results. It all sounds simple,
but the regular appearance of reward stories in the press
betrays its complexity in action. |
The subject of executive reward, overall
pay levels and size of incentive payments regularly hits the
headlines. Greg says “Aside
from the issue of market norms and competitive practice, in my
experience the key matter is ‘relativity’ – if
the company is manifestly doing well, then large pay-outs to
executives are acceptable. However if results are poor, bonuses
should also be commensurately lower. This is easy to plan into
the equation at the outset, if consultants are realistic and
honest! The company should also wish to be sensitive, and to
avoid potentially adverse publicity over pay awards which seem
to be undeserved”
Pensions- the corporate perspective
For pensions, the key issue for individuals
(the corporate perspective is well-aired in the press) is that ‘old-style guaranteed
pensions’ have now been almost entirely replaced with defined
contribution ‘money purchase’ schemes. However, poor
stock market returns mean that the resulting pension payment
on current projections is likely to be equally poor. Individual
employees will therefore need to significantly increase their
personal contributions (assuming their employers will not make
up the shortfall), and that needs to be communicated effectively
to the workforce.
“Employers now have more-or-less full control of their
pensions costs, but this does not mean these are fixed: they
can be increased, primarily (but not necessarily) in line with
market trends. There could be a competitive advantage here for ‘generous’ employers,
but unfortunately younger employees (say under 35-40) tend not
to put too high a ‘value’ on long-term future pensions
benefits. If the ‘bang for the buck’ from an employer’s
perspective is not good, they are less inclined to devote cash
to this, rather than other, benefits. Thus the employee ‘profile’ is
important, and can vary tremendously.” From an employer’s
perspective, Greg is therefore saying that if benefits are to
come from an employer’s overall pot of cash, the response
in improved employee productivity may come from other benefits
than pension contributions. This is a point rarely raised in
the press- younger staff particularly would seem to respond better
to benefits now rather than at 65.
Greg’s three-year epic stint has recently
come to a close, and he is looking ahead to new horizons. As
with all Interregna
interim managers, he is flexible and is looking for 3-4 days
a week for 6-12 months. He expects his next role to be in the
City, but is keeping an adventurous eye open for a suitable overseas
assignment.
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