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One of the biggest challenges that many agencies face is how to fairly compensate employees. Talent is the heart and soul of the business, so you want to ensure you’re doing everything you can to keep your performing employees around.

At the same time, you’re running a business so you need to make smart decisions that will ensure sustainable profits to keep the doors open.

Some agencies turn to COLAs (short for Cost of Living Adjustments) to try to ensure that salaries at least keep pace with inflation.

However, this approach has some drawbacks that Chip and Gini discuss in this week’s episode.

Whether you choose to use COLAs or not, you’ll get lots of useful insight from listening to the discussion.

Quotes

• Gini: “Transparency and communication — it’s almost like that’s what we do for a living for our clients. So maybe we should do it internally as well.”
• Gini, on non-monetary compensation: “I always do things for my team. I try to go the extra mile and give them experiences or gifts that they wouldn’t necessarily buy themselves, but that they want.”
• Chip: “Ultimately, when it comes to compensation, the goal is to make your employees feel appreciated.”
• Chip’s bottom line on COLAs:  “I think that that they are the easy way out and not the smart way out.”

Resources

• Drive by Daniel Pink

[read the transcript]

About Chip Griffin

Chip Griffin is the Founder & CEO of the Small Agency Growth Alliance (SAGA) and a longtime agency owner and executive. He helps PR and marketing communications agencies build better businesses. Full bio