How to Have the Best Employees (Collection)

4. Compensation

The reader is reminded that this chapter was written originally in “normal” times—that is, before the Great Recession. The chapter’s data and cases have been updated as needed, but a number of its arguments require considerable elaboration for periods of severe economic downturn, and these will be provided in Chapter 5, “The Impact of the Great Recession: Flight to Preservation.” In that chapter, for example, we discuss in considerably greater detail how the importance of pay—especially pay increases—declined as the importance of job security increased in the recession. But pay is trivial to no one, and for quite a few workers in quite a few companies (especially those doing well), it remained central. Further, be assured that ...