| Abstract: | The evaluation of the impact of changes in reward systems is a common recommendation in the personnel practitioner literature, but little has been written about how and to what extent practitioners themselves evaluate. This article therefore focuses on the activities of HR managers who have introduced new pay systems, not on academic studies of reward system change. Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted in 15 large, unionised organisations in England between 2000 and 2002. The study found that little formal evaluation of changes in pay and grading systems had been carried out and that managers expressed considerable scepticism about the evaluation process. They relied heavily on informal or anecdotal feedback, and appeared to have little psychological incentive to evaluate. The article suggests explanations for this lack of formal evaluation, drawing on the management decision‐making literature, and recommends how changes in reward systems should be evaluated. |
