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28 Mar 2019
by Liz Morrell

Video tutorial: Baker Hughes’ Ishbel Inkster on reward innovation and cultural change at her company

When it comes to reward innovation it is cultural changes that have forced the biggest rethink in reward transformation at Baker Hughes a GE Company, according to Ishbel Inkster, total reward global leader at BHGE.

Presenting a case study at the Reba Innovation Day she told delegates that BHGE drives a holistic approach to engaging employees and that the company was following a cultural transformation roadmap for change.

She said the company had overhauled its performance development strategy, replacing an annual appraisal process that seldom saw action. Instead the business has started a new process to have a more flexible system. “A lot of the concepts are the same but we are trying to do it on a more real-time basis,” she said. “It’s about doing fewer things, better,” she said.  

Within rewards she said BHGE took away ratings and went back to its basic compensation philosophy with the most important part being its focus on outcomes. She said managers were expected to reinforce that philosophy by differentiating rewards given to employees.

“When we took away ratings there was a big issue,” she said. However she said that testing proved that leaders could apply differentiation without the ratings. However she said there was some loss of rigour within the overall PD system that needed to be addressed. As a result the company has launched myRewards@GE, a pilot to contemporize rewards to make it more flexible, integrated and more personalised.

The new platform allows staff within the company to give, earn and choose rewards. “Managers can use it at any time but we are also trying to give a variety of rewards,” said Inkster. “We have to continue to be disruptive in rewards to figure out how we can match the culture of the organisation.”

This video was recorded at the REBA Innovation Day 2018, held in London on 22 November