Purpose-This paper seeks to explore the reasons why many organisations do not evaluate the effectiveness of their reward policies and practices, examines the approaches used by those organizations which do evaluate, and develops a model of evidence-based reward management which describes how evaluation can take place. Design/methodology/approach-The paper draws on a study of why organisations do or do not evaluate reward and an examination of what organizations taking evaluation seriously were doing about it. The study was based on a survey of 173 reward and HR practitioners and 13 case studies. Findings-The survey found that only 46 per cent of respondents carried out a full evaluation. Other surveys have established that an even lower proportion evaluated. Those organisations which evaluate reward do so because they recognise that it is necessary to obtain value for money from their considerable expenditure on pay. Those who do not evaluate offer a number of reasons, but the most important was lack of resources or time. It was established that while an evidence-based approach was desirable there was no set pattern of conducting an evaluation. Practical implications-Information about the evaluation practices of the case study organisations and the concept of evidence-based reward management as an approach to evaluation provide guidance to practitioners on how they can measure the effectiveness of their reward policies and practices. Originality/value-The paper extends the pioneering research of Corby et al. to develop new insights into the process of reward evaluation.

The article argues that many of the practices associated with the concept of human resource management were flourishing under different names before the notion of HRM emerged in the mid-1980s. There have been many developments in these practices but they have been evolutionary. They have not happened because of any revolutionary new approaches derived from HRM theory. The fact that the pace of change in personnel management is faster now than before the 1980s is not attributable to the advent of HRM as a philosophy. It has been forced on organisations by the rapidly changing business, political, economic and social environment. It has also taken place as a result of the increased professionalism of personnel practitioners encouraged by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and by the burgeoning academic institutions which have disseminated ideas about human resource management more comprehensively through a wider range of high quality publications.

An assertiveness training program for 343 fourth- and fifth-grade children was designed and evaluated. All children in 10 classrooms were randomly assigned by classroom to one of three conditions: (a) assertiveness training, (b) a control intervention, or (c) a no-treatment control. The intervention procedures were administered for 2 hours a week for 12 weeks in groups of 6 pupils each. Assertiveness was higher among classes receiving assertion training on the quality of alternatives generated on the Interpersonal Problem-solving Test, an Assertion Quiz and a Group Decision Task. Teachers reported better comportment and higher achievement and higher popularity among the assertion classes. Grade point averages increased for the pupils in the assertiveness group 1 year following the intervention. Observations indicated a greater number of student-initiated contacts with the teacher and fewer questions answered by the pupils receiving assertiveness training. The usefulness of assertiveness training as a primary prevention intervention is discussed.

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Many U.K. organizations have adopted the U.S. concepts of reward strategy and total rewards. This article profiles common difficulties with these strategies in the local environment, primarily relating to implementation, line management behavior, and alignment with business goals. By examining reward trends and practices in areas including job evaluation, pay structure design, and contingent and variable pay, this article demonstrates that a more realistic, tailored, diverse, and long-term approach is enabling U.K. reward professionals to come closer to fulfilling their strategic ambitions. A unique melting pot of practices is evident, with attention to internal equity as well as market rates in pay setting, flexibility, and control in pay structuring and competencies, and results in pay adjustment and individual and collective performance in bonus plans. The emphasis is on improvements rather than extraordinary new developments. And as in North America, reward management is certainly now at the heart of the HR and business agenda in the United Kingdom.

We demonstrate an approach to predict latent personal attributes including user demographics, online personality, emotions and sentiments from texts published on Twitter. We rely on machine learning and natural language processing techniques to learn models from user communications. We first examine individual tweets to detect emotions and opinions emanating from them, and then analyze all the tweets published by a user to infer latent traits of that individual. We consider various user properties including age, gender, income, education, relationship status, optimism and life satisfaction. We focus on Ekman’s six emotions: anger, joy, surprise, fear, disgust and sadness. Our work can help social network users to understand how others may perceive them based on how they communicate in social media, in addition to its evident applications in online sales and marketing, targeted advertising, large scale polling and healthcare analytics.