Vital, Visible And Vicious Essay

Question 4. Explain what the authors of your text wanted to convey with the following words in the subtitle of Chapter 7: “Vital, Visible, and Vicious.” Explain why Compensation plans always generate displeasure among both public and private sector employees.

a. The authors refer vital, viable and vicious in terms of how jurisdiction handles salaries and benefits. Vital is in reference to maintaining an organizations creditability and individual sustenance. Good management of salaries and benefit programs are vital in order to achieve optimal success within an organization. Again since payroll is a huge part of an organizations budget, handling this would be pretty important. Visible refers to the fact that payroll or agencies, and employee salaries are a matter of public record. People can see how an organization manages its money and compare this to others. Vicious refers to actual or an

One reason that compensation plans produce displeasure is because employees often compare themselves to others. Weather it is with individual in similar type of positions within the agency, other individuals who are not in the same positions in the agency or even in the same department or people who don’t even do the same job, a person will often has the tendency to compare themselves. The point is that as people we all compare ourselves to what others have and if there is any distinction between us and them, someone may become disgruntle. Compensation is a little more prevalent with comparing oneself, well because it’s usually all about money.

Another reason is the remuneration is driven more by political than economic considerations. Politics is more concerned with cost of personnel and compensation programs are used as political pawns. Politics is not fond of raising taxes, adjusting budgets, cutting off services etc. in order to increase pay wages. Politics affects compensation more than objective merit which does not inspire confidence in compensation