Reward strategies for 2024 and beyond

After the austerity of the 2010s, the pandemic, and now the cost of living crisis, the pay and benefits offered to employees are on the move. Dr Duncan Brown, co-author of the Handbook of Reward Management Practice, examines the fairer, more compassionate reward strategies that are emerging to help drive engagement and high performance.

Pay and especially benefits used to be regarded as a specialist and somnolent area of management practice, administering the “pay and rations” for employees. Michael Armstrong’s Handbook of Pay Administration first edition was your go-to guidance.

Six editions of the handbook later, crises from Covid to Ukraine and the rising cost of living have propelled reward professionals from their back rooms to a regular board room presence.

They have responded by getting agreement from boards to fund super-charged wellbeing policies and EAP helplines, with enhanced sick pay and mindfulness apps. There has been widespread use of “golden hellos”, formerly reserved for the likes of investment bankers and City lawyers, and new initiatives, such as one-off bonuses and free food provisions to help employees with the cost of living.

Mine and Armstrong’s seventh edition of the Handbook of Reward Management Practice is a complete rewrite of our last edition in 2019. The book contains updated versions of all Michael’s design chapters on job evaluation, grading structures, flexible benefit plans and wellbeing programmes.

But our new book can…