Pay Me Extra to Train Peers?

If you don't recognize the guy in the photo, you're in good company. Here's a clue: this guy was Cool. COOL. Still not sure?

It's Calvin Coolidge, a most excellent former President of the U.S. You can read about old Cal here. I'm the same age Calvin was when he became President of the U.S., so I remember a hot HR trend of the late 80's and early 90's called Skill-Based Pay. Ever heard of it?

In Skill-Based Pay, you'd pay employees more per hour as they acquired more skills. I always thought it was an idiotic idea. Of course, back in those days, you weren't assumed to have acquired a skill unless you took a class to learn it. So it was really get-through-the-training-based-pay. And you were only sent to training when your manager decided to send you. So if you worked your tush off and learned every system in the joint from your colleagues and ended up being irreplaceable, too bad for you - you'd only get paid more per hour after you went to the class. Goofy.

Todd Hudson writes a great piece on pay for mentoring here. Todd says that it's a bad idea to pay people to train other people on the job, because if you do that, you're encouraging people to hoard what they know. How do you create a hospitable climate for knowledge transfer? Read Todd's blog and subscribe to his newsletter to keep on top of that pithy topic. To get on the newsletter mailing list, send an email message to info@maverickinstitute.com.