Senior Staff Performance Management - Incentives

The Client

The Deputy Vice Chancellor of a University employing some 5000 staff operating across multiple campuses in Australia and overseas.

The Brief

To review existing performance pay arrangements for senior academic staff and recommend a new scheme.  The client was seeking to overhaul current arrangements and to establish a broader scheme to be extended to additional senior academic staff and senior staff across business support groups in the University. 

The University was undergoing significant changes to roles, structures and business processes and the scheme needed to align with and enable  these changes to be embedded.

Our Response

We met with key senior staff from across the University to understand how previous performance pay arrangements had operated, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.  These previous processes had been unstructured and one of the challenges was to establish a clear picture of the way in which performance pay had been operating in practice for senior staff.  Previous processes had addressed a limited range of senior academic roles and had not covered senior roles in enabling non academic business areas.  Therefore the design and scope for the new process needed substantial consideration.

We considered the key business drivers, business processes, and criteria that would be relevant to rewarding performance based on incentive pay to senior staff.  These considerations along with our direct consultations with key senior staff addressed what success looks like for senior staff performing within the University.  This considered the performance perspective of contributions to business outcomes and also performance from a wider perspective of leadership roles and expectations.

After initial research which addressed past practices of the University, we combined this with our expert knowledge of options and approaches to incentives and performance pay and provided preliminary advice to the Deputy Vice Chancellor.  We then consulted with senior staff and decision makers to identify and develop new options and models for a scheme covering all senior staff.  

We provided a comprehensive report, including identification of the issues involved, canvassing different scheme design options and pros and cons, the levels of support for different options, and our recommendations about both the design of the proposed new scheme and how to implement it. 

The Results

Our report and recommendations were approved by the senior management team.  This included the design of a new performance pay scheme, detailed supporting materials, and  implementation requirements.

Our client implemented the new arrangements consistent with our advice and recommendations. 

The extensive consultation process that we undertook to develop the scheme provided a foundation of consistent information for senior leaders involved in decision making to make educated decisions.  This assisted their collective consideration, enabling a common understanding to adopt the proposed scheme and appreciate the implementation requirements.