pay

So, if we're not going to pay our people by the hour, what are the alternatives?

The key to this is finding ways to identify why you're employing somebody, and then adopting performance measures that reflect what you're expecting them to add to the business.

Using my role with ITVidya as an example:

I'm there, fundamentally, to have the business be successful. This means a number of things:

* Driving membership growth;
* Driving premium membership growth;
* Driving content creation;
* Increasing the "stickiness" of the site;
* Identifying and implementing partnerships that will achieve the above;

I think most people, if offered the chance, would happily work for R10,000 per hour. Even more, given the chance, would work for R100,000 per hour. And yet, nobody ever got really wealthy by charging in that way. And the truth of it is, almost nobody gets rewarded at even those levels. Huge numbers have to make do with the minimum wage, or some average pay rate for people working at their level in their organisation, which takes no account of their personal productivity or contribution.

The fundamental problem with charging by the hour is that it's an input measurement, which means that it can only ever be loosely related to results (output). Surely, when a business owner or manager chooses to employ somebody, they shouldn't really care a jot whether that person attends for 40 hours a week or 40 minutes, as long as the desired results get produced. One of the problems is that managers have become unaccustomed to identifying good output measures, which could be used to reward people properly