Since I am now waiting for some important decisions to be made, I’ve spent time tidying up my domicile, producing music, meeting up with friends, tweaking this blog’s design and finally reading all the management books that I didn’t have time to read, while ironically in business school.
As there’s nothing else new to update my readers with, I’ll extract pertinent quotes whenever I find them so that we can all benefit from these insights. My first selected passage is from [’12: The Elements of Great Managing’](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KYGD42?ie=UTF8&tag=vantan-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=B001KYGD42), which is something I am hoping to be able to do myself, sooner rather than later. Since some of my classmates have found jobs, others are negotiating and making a decision, and others are still looking around and contemplating returning to their old companies, I thought the chapter on compensation and other more intangible benefits would be pertinent.
The chapter on Pay begins by clarifying that while pay isn’t everything, not all companies compensate their employees fairly. It discusses possible solutions, such as revealing to everyone how compensation is calculated, while keeping everyone’s exact wages private, as they should be. Towards the end it talks about reciprocity:
> While money itself does not buy engagement, it appears that an employee’s perception that the company is aggressively looking out for his financial interest leads to productive reciprocation. More than just the money, the thought counts… Do [executives] want a workforce that thinks, “I have to fight for every extra dollar they begrudingly pay me,” or one that feels, “If I look out for my company, they will look out for me”? Simple questions reveal where a company stands. If a talented employee does something extraordinary or repeatedly distinguishes herself, will it be her manager or the employee herself who initiates discussion of a raise? Does the company spend more to attract outside stars than to cultivate internal ones? Does the company realize its talent is underpaid only after a competitor woos them away?
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> … what employees enthusiastically do for the company depends heavily on what the company eagerly does for them.