instruction · evidence-based answer
How do you build a business case for changing your reward strategy?
The short answer
Zingheim & Schuster's starting point in Pay People Right is that reward change needs a business case built on business goals — not on pay envy or a benchmarking gap — and that the point of rewards is to align the workforce with where the company is going and to extend people's line of sight to results they can actually affect. Frame it as a win-win partnership (a better workforce and a better business, together), specify which of base pay, variable pay, recognition, and benefits each goal calls for rather than reaching for one lever, and plan the implementation and communication as deliberately as the plan design. Reward change fails on the rollout, not the spreadsheet.
The problem underneath
Reward change often gets pitched on pay envy or benchmarking drift; without a business case tied to business goals it stalls, and even a sound plan fails on rollout rather than arithmetic.
Grounded in
- Pay People Right! — Zingheim & Schuster
Answer synthesized from the extracted models of these works in our library.
Related questions
- How do I justify redesigning our compensation program?
- How do you get buy-in to change how we pay people?
Stop re-deriving this by hand. Compensation tools & market datasets — Design pay structures and executive plans on posted-price data, not a benchmarking guess.