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15 Jun 2018
by Liz Morrell

Video tutorial: A case study into how Laird has reacted to major business change with reward

A shock profit warning in 2016 left the planned restructuring of reward by electronics company Laird in turmoil as the company attempted to react, according to Tom Blake, group head of reward and global HR director at Laird.

Giving a frank but honest account of the challenges the business faced to maintain motivation and adjust reward to suit to delegates at the REBA Reward Leaders’ Forum 2018, he said the company had worked hard to reduce the impact of the profit warning on moral and to keep its staff engaged.

“We reviewed our sharescheme. We knew people had lost money. We also came up with a new budgeting process for our management bonus,” he said.

In 2018 the company announced it was delisting and being sold to an investment house, giving Blake a new challenge to deal with. “We are now in a bit of a holding period. We now need to think about this year through to when our deal completes how do we keep people motivated? How do we keep them on track to delivering the budgets this year when right now I don’t know how I can reward people and if I can make big bonus payments?” said Blake.

He said he was also working on how to retain people after the deal was completed too. “We are all facing the same challenges so how do we do this,” he said.

He said decisions were made in conjunction with employees and that the company was working harder than ever to react quickly to change and communicate to its staff at speed. “We’ve had to continually change how we are doing things but take our employees on that journey with us too,” he said.  

This video was recorded at the REBA Reward Leaders’ Forum 2018 in London on 18 April 2018.