Money is not everything, intangibles are vital

TRENDS: Total Reward is not just a term bandied about to attract employees, firms are using it as a strategic tool.

At Pantaloon Retail, 'it' translates into involving the family. At Sapient, 'it' entails fostering a high performance culture. And at Max New York Life 'it' is about comprehensive and progressive people policies.

'It' is Total Reward"" the unique way in which a firm attracts, retains and motivates employees in this era of talent wars. Total reward is a sum of the monetary and non-monetary returns provided to employees.

It involves the deliberate integration of five key elements"" compensation, benefits, work-life balance, performance and recognition and development and career opportunities.

Affirms Rajit Mehta, executive director of HR, training and internal communication at Max New York Life (MNYL): "In today's competitive environment, playing just a monetary game to attract and retain talent is a losing proposition."

It is critical, he notes, to provide each employee with a strong, comprehensive value proposition that also serves as a key differentiator and builds an emotional connect.

According to Anil Sachdev, chairman and MD of Grow Talent, intangible benefits have become integral to employee retention and engagement. Experts believe that reward and recognition is now the key to retention. "Nothing succeeds like applause among your peer group," Sachdev maintains.

Sanjay Jog, HR head at Pantaloon Retail India Limited, agrees: "Employee engagement is not transactional but has to be viewed holistically."

Pantaloon has many engagement activities, from education to rewards and recognition. "Eighty per cent of our 18,000 employees are frontline staff and it's important to have value-add at this level especially," he says.

The company has employee discounts available even to their families, non-contractual education loans and keeps 30 per cent of compensation as variable.

Among other things Pantaloon has an employee insurance scheme that insures them for five times the amount of their cost-to-company. "The emotional connect with the staff is needed nowadays," Jog explains.

Binoo Wadhwa, director of people strategy at Sapient Technologies, stresses value-add: "A critical component of our People Success (HR) Strategy is to make employees feel that they are recognised."

Some of the awards Sapient has instituted to foster a high performance culture are performance rewards; growth based recognition; project based recognition; individual recognition; and the business development excellence awards.

According to industry experts, a well-designed compensation and benefits system is half the battle won. Agrees Mehta: "This approach helps the organisation promote a culture of meritocracy."

MNYL's HR processes attempt to offer a unique value proposition consisting of clarity of purpose; commitment to a published value system; learning opportunities; career growth; financial rewards; and 'fun' events at work.

Wadhwa says: "Total rewards can be very effective for a company and in our experience, the intangible or non-monetary benefits are well received by the staff."

In fact, the leadership team is using the information gathered from employees through focus group discussions on what keeps employees inspired and engaged to fashion a retention strategy. "By focusing on what keeps people engaged at Sapient, we will be able to manage our attrition, which is currently about 20 per cent."

Employee engagement not retention is what Jog is concerned with. However, he concedes that Pantaloon's low attrition of 23.6 per cent proves the effectiveness of the group's rewards programme.