Organization 21C: Someday All Organizations Will Lead This Way

Moving from Compensation to Total Rewards

The portfolio of reward programs used by most managers in the 20th century consisted primarily of compensation (wages, salaries, and incentives) and benefits. The portfolio of compensation and benefits was usually homogeneous for occupational groups and controlled by the human resource management department. This approach worked relatively well with the stable business environments that characterized much of the 20th century.

Radical changes in the nature of work in the 21st century require a shift in the paradigm from two forms of rewards to multiple forms of rewards, from homogeneous rewards to heterogeneous reward programs, and from human resource management control to line manager control. In the ...