The company I have chosen to research is Burton. Burton is a snowboarding company. They make snowboards, snowboard bindings, ski jackets, pants and most accessories you could ever need for the snow. Burton has their own stores, but also distributes them to sporting good stores like Dick’s, Big 5 and many more. While researching more into this company, I have found that they have offices in six different countries. Burton is in the retail industry, and according to Glassdoor and Comparably, they pay exceptionally well when compared to companies of similar size.
I put a lot of thought into whether Burton would benefit more from a person-focused or job-based pay. Overall, I think a job-based pay structure would be more beneficial for Burton. A job-based approach focuses more on the responsibilities, working conditions and other compensable factors rather than skills and knowledge. Although there are some positions within Burton that could benefit from a person-focused pay, the majority of positions should be job-based.
There are several departments within Burton, including administration, HR, IT, operations, sales, customer support, finance and a few others. A large part of Burton is their sales. Once their products are manufactured, their sales department is responsible for selling their products in house or selling them to sporting goods stores to sell. If we take a look at the responsibilities of a sales representative at Burton, they have to interact with customers, be knowledgeable on the products and most of the time they work indoors. Through my research, people who are passionate about snowboarding love this role and the company in general. Through their great employee discounts and fun atmosphere, a job-based pay structure won’t deter someone from working here.
If Burton uses a job-based pay structure, it will be easier for management and HR to assess. Although person-focused pay would remove pay as an entitlement, I don’t think Burton needs to do that. Lots of people want to work at Burton because they love snowboarding, not necessarily because of the pay. Also, there are not enough jobs that would benefit from a person-focused pay. The skills and knowledge required are not extensive enough to implement this kind of pay.
