Business success in our fast moving, knowledge based and technology driven world is becoming more and more dependent on certain types of human talent. The lucky holders of that talent will be able to command a premium price for their skills, and the rest of us will look on with envy.
The idea of critical talent is pushing to the forefront of base salary management. Along with it comes the notion that base salary decisions can no longer hang simply on the traditional merit matrix variables of individual performance and position in range, but must increasingly reflect the need to invest in talent that is critical to the success of the organization's mission.
My brief discussion of mission critical talent in yesterday's Workforce webinar (Making Compensation Work in 2010 and Beyond) generated a lot of great questions - more than we were able to get to in our allotted Q&A time. Some of them focused on the approach and process for figuring out which skills are critical for a particular organization; others reflected concern about the impact of this delineation on the workforce. What about the "have nots" who still do important work for the organization? Won't they be demotivated to learn they've been excluded from a category defined as "mission critical"?
I had the chance to reflect more on how we best invest in and reward mission critical skills, and shared some thoughts about it in my post today at the Compensation Cafe. Take a look and share your own thoughts, won't you?
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