U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

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Choosing the Best Course Using Strategic Compensation

A key message of OPM's Strategic Compensation Conference 2000, held August 28-29, 2000 in Washington, D.C., was that agencies should use their compensation systems strategically to attract, retain, and reward their employees. Over 500 Federal employees from 53 agencies and 36 states attended the conference to hear compensation, classification, performance management, and other specialists discuss the theme "Choosing the Right Course for Today and Tomorrow." The articles in this issue of Workforce Performance highlight many points made during the conference.

OPM Director Janice R. Lachance opened the conference with an upbeat speech emphasizing how important it is for agencies to choose the right course by using all the compensation tools available to them. Some of these tools include special salary rates, incentive awards, and "the 3 Rs,"–recruitment bonuses, relocation bonuses, and retention allowances. She also emphasized the importance of having agencies focus on long term workforce planning as well as immediate decisions about compensation issues.

Strategic Rewards.  To meet workplace challenges, Director Lachance observed that agencies must be able to "have talented people in the right jobs with the right skills at the right time." To achieve this, agencies must think strategically and use everything that employees find rewarding, including compensation, benefits, development and learning, and the work environment to achieve their missions. (See our related article, Strategic Rewards.)

The Best Course for the Future.  According to Director Lachance, the goals of the organization must be the driver of any compensation system, public or private. Employee rewards are an important way to communicate information about those goals, that is, what the organization values and its priorities. The compensation system should allow agencies to anticipate and respond to technological, demographic, and economic changes. Its structure should include a variety of strategic compensation tools to attract, keep, and reward the best and brightest employees. Strategic compensation requires collaboration among the entire Federal community, including agencies, unions, management and professional associations, and the Congress.

Originally published on Fall 2000.