The Carnival of HR: Great HR Reading

The Carnival of HR, June version, is up at Inflexion Point. Some great reading here. Posts include the topics of employee engagement, hiring freezes, use of social media, selling HR, trademarks, executive pay, using your employees as guinea pigs and of course the ever popular putting lipstick on a pig. So for these interesting topics and more head on over to the Carnival by clicking the link in the first line.

A Little Drucker Wisdom: We Should Have Listened

I am currently reading a book entitled "A Brief History of the Future: How Visionary Thinkers Changed the World and Tomorrow's Trends are 'Made' and Marketed" . One of the visionary thinkers featured in the book is Peter Drucker. Drucker, in his 39 books and numerous articles, weighed in on many management subjects. One of the subjects he discussed in 1977 and 1984, and felt strongly about his entire career, was executive compensation. His premise was that executives should not be paid exorbitant salaries. In his opinion no more that 20 times what the lowest level worker made. He felt it did not foster teamwork and sent the wrong messages about class. Some companies listened, but very few. Given the problems we have today perhaps we ALL should have.

As I was investigating this subject I came across a Businessweek article discussing the subject. Take a look at "Put a Cap On CEO Pay" by Rick Wartzman for a more complete discussion.

It just points out that when you label someone as "The Greatest Management Thinker of our Times" perhaps we should heed his/her advice. Guess we never learn.