employee motivation-money matters
TRANSCRIPT
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Employee Motivation: Money Matters New Directions in Compensation & Incentives
Employee Motivation: Money Matters
May 2006
By: Sumeet Varghese
Sponsored by: Vurv Technology
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EXECUT IVE SUMMARY
The interests of human resource managers and
compensation professionals converge when it comes to
compensation plans. A major headache for talent
managers today is to operate within constrictive limits to
make pay as motivating as they can for the employee.
An important challenge companies face is to design a
pay program that not only contributes to employee
retention but directly impacts their motivation as well.
As Steve Chinn, Director of Compensation and Benefits
at Novo Nordisk says, “While we worry about getting
and retaining the right kind of people in the
organization we miss the critical link in between: how tomotivate and reward people for their performance and
their contributions to organizations.” This paper will
examine ways to bring talent management and
compensation practices together to attract, motivate,
retain and develop human capital assets.
THE CHANGING PAY FOR PERFORMANCE LANDSCAPE
Traditional merit systems have dominated the workplace
for the past 40 years. Barry Maclean, Practice Leader in
Compensation Solutions at Vurv Technology, says that
since the 60s and 70s many companies have grappled
with the issue of finding suitable pay-for-performance
solutions. Over time a mix of merit pay, stocks, and
bonuses have been used to motivate employees.
However, except in a few instances, most companies are
not satisfied with their programs. In a time when
competition for talent is a priority, the “native talent” is
restless. In an online poll conducted by the Human
Capital Institute during a special webcast on the topic,
about 40% of respondents said their programs were
moderately effective and motivating from an employee’s
perspective1. Barely 2% found it highly effective. Almost
1 See Talent Development Compensation & Incentives Webcast Series, Employee Motivation: Money Matters Wed, 22 Mar 2006 at
http://www.humancapitalinstitute.org/hci/events_webcast_archive.guid?_trainingID=396
51% of respondents felt the merit program
needed an overhaul and 45% strongly supported a
change in the way bonuses were administered.
“Truly, the key is to find a program that covers all
employees,” says Maclean. Historically pay for
performance programs have been skewed to
benefit different pools of employees. While
general trends may vary by company size,
strategy, etc., Maclean’s recap of past trends
shows:
Merit increases have evolved over the past 30-40
years to reach a stage where non-management
merit is a major cost component of the program
but not a major component for middle or topmanagement.
Bonuses have been utilized in a diametrically
opposite manner than merit has. Cash/stock
bonuses have been very strong components for
the last two decades and are only now becoming
an important element in exempt employee
compensation, a clear indication that there is an
opportunity to draw in non-exempt people into
the scheme.
Stock options are heavily skewed towards
management, and a major component of top
management compensation. There has been a
pullback since the 80’s and 90’s due to the
dotcom bubble burst and the backlash against
expensive executive compensation.
According to Maclean one of the main challenges
in implementing a motivational pay for
performance system based on the old model is to
rectify the skewed nature of its various
components with respect to different classes of
employees. “While the relative value of all these
components plays out in different ways for
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different employee categories,” says Maclean, “the
change in non-management levels in the past decade
has brought in variable pay into the mix, even though
there is heavy reliance on merit.” Moreover, there
remains a strong tendency to focus on senior
management while everyone else is viewed as part of the
delivery system. This may be because top officials lead,
strategize, do the deals, drive the corporate culture, and
contribute to the creation of stockholder value, but such
a picture can be misleading.
Given the demographics of large organizations the cost
of any pay for performance program is heavily skewed
towards non-management employees. Just the merit
component for non-management employees is likely to
be four or five times the entire cost of the package fortop executives, observes Maclean. See table 1, below:
Table 1
Both the merit and bonus components of the program in
Table 1 require fixing, says Maclean. The Human Capital
Institute webcast poll revealed that employees were
dissatisfied with the merit and bonus components of
their pay for performance package. Only 44% of
respondents reported the use of satisfaction surveys to
get employees’ perspective on compensation. Of the
remaining respondents, 22% stated exit interviews were
used to get employee ideas about compensation, and
20% suggested their organizations use different
methods.
The reasons why a merit system doesn’t work, says
Maclean, are simple enough to understand. The
WorldatWork Study shows2:
95% of employees view merit increases as an
entitlement like vacations and basic benefit
programs. They don’t get any more motivational
impact from merit increases than they get from
benefit programs.
The difference between average and top
performers’ merit increases is 2%. Data shows
average performers receive 3% and the top
performers 5%.
Merit programs are not funded at a level sufficient
to motivate a change in desired employee
behavior.There isn’t enough money to keep up with
advancing market rates. For instance, the average
merit budget in 2006 is 3.75% and the average
range structure increase is 2.5% In order to keep
compensation in line with the market the actual
merit funding will only be 1.25%. This money is
virtually meaningless at an individual employee
level. But from a management perspective, the
1.25% can be an enormous sum of money in an
organization with 20,000 employees.
MERIT MATRIX EXAMINED
A traditional merit matrix comprises two
dimensions: employee performance depicted by
rows on a five point rating scale and employee
salary arranged in columns. The intersection of
the two contains the cell that shows merit
increases. Generally a merit matrix is expressed in
“compa-ratios”. It is a way of looking not only at
performance but also at how you are paid in
relation to the job you perform in the
2 Also known as the International Compensation Association,the WorldatWork regularly publishes reports on salary/rewardsrelated activities. See report titled “Bonus Program Practices: ASurvey of Members of WorldatWork”, August 2005at http://www.worldatwork.org for an account of the limitedimpact merit systems have.
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marketplace. A compa-ratio is obtained when salary is
divided by the salary range mid-point. Most
organizations position the midpoints to the market.
What that means is if your compa-ratio is 100% you are
paid at the market rates. The concept has been around
for 40 or 50 years and is designed to accelerate low paid
but high performing employee salaries, and slow down
the higher paid but low performing employees. As Table
2 shows:
Low-paid, high performers receive the largest increases
since they are low paid and eligible to receive maximum
merit increases. They are also the most vulnerable
employees as they are talented and underpaid.
Competitively paid average performers keep pace with
the market. Employees who meet expectations and arecurrently paid in the middle range, where the market
would expect them to be, are held constant under the
merit increase program.
Highly paid, low performers receive little or no salary
adjustment.
Table 2
In the traditional merit matrix, large inequities are
perpetuated. Consider the case of two employees in the
same job with a midpoint salary of $50,000 (see Table 5
below). Both exceed expectations and are in the same
performance range. If Employee A is paid at the lower
end of the range and employee B at the top of the
range, Employee A is eligible for a 5% to 7% merit
increase. The real inequity is that at the end of
the whole cycle Employee B is making 40% more:
Table 3
In order to overcome perceived inequities, some
organizations have replaced the traditional merit
matrix with merit guidelines that pay out like a
bonus. They have eliminated the second aspect of
decision-making where an individual is paid in the
range and treat a merit increase as a bonus.
Employee performance is rated to determine the
pay increase and is built into the base pay
permanently, as shown in Table 4.
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Table 4
However, when this non-matrix model is used for two
employees in the same job with the same performance, it
makes matters worse as the difference in pay increases.
Because of the way the program works both employees
can get 4-7% merit increases. But the increase is applied
at the salary level so there is a compounding effect. Thehigh performer is paid even more with the end result
that the gap keeps growing. See Table 5 below:
Table 5
TARGET PAY … THE PRACTICAL ALTERNATIVE
Since the traditional merit matrix isn’t designed
for merit increases that are administered like
bonuses and the alternative bonus-like merit
increase guidelines perpetuate real pay inequities,
Maclean is of the opinion that a better approach
would be to target what an employee should be
paid based on performance and allocate salary
increase dollars based on gap analysis. It is
important to close the gap between what they
should be paid and what they are currently paid.
People are more likely to leave if they’re not paid
what they’re worth, rather than because they
didn’t get a merit increase.
Target pay, Maclean’s alternative, is a
straightforward, four-step process. It involves:
• Target Pay: Determining where someone
should be paid in the range based on
their performance and capability
• Target Pay Gap: Determining the
difference between the target pay and
current pay
•
Gap Analysis: Allocating the budget based on the amount of difference
• Using variable pay plans to reward one-
time performance once and not adding
that to base pay in perpetuity
A target pay matrix indicates a minimum and
maximum salary range and has nothing to do
with how much of an increase someone should
get. The range is divided into five equal parts
called quintiles. The middle quintile highlighted in
the table below brackets the market. Target pay
considers pay for performance not as a one-year
snap shot but over time. It factors in knowledge,
skills, and experience increases over time. An
employee’s salary grows at the same rate as the
skills for the job are acquired, and is tied into
what the market value is for that job.
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Table 6
Target pay is an underutilized management and
retention tool. A target pay approach also irons outperceived and real inequities. For example, three
employees in the same job at the same level of
performance would receive an equitable increase over a
period of time. Assuming a 3.75% increase in budget,
$5,663 can be allocated in the following ways among
the three employees:
• Allocate the entire amount to Employee A
• Allocate $4,663 to Employee A and $1,000 to
Employee B• Allocate $5,000 to Employee A and balance to
Employee B
The most important point here is that employee C is
absent from the decision process because C is paid
significantly over what C’s performance would fetch in
the market though C is eligible to receive an incentive
bonus.
TARGET PAY AS A MANAGEMENT TOOL
Maclean’s Target Pay approach to employee
compensation addresses two core challenges existing
models face: expanding differential pay rates for the
same kind of employees and the skewed nature of
reward for the various employee levels. To manage this
he suggests extending target-based incentive
programs further down in the organization as the
ideal counterpart to target pay. A webcast poll
conducted by the Human Capital Institute found
that for 51% of respondents the non-exempt
individual contributor is the lowest level in the
organization that is eligible to participate in a
formal incentive program. Only 25% reported
programs for the exempt individual contributor
category. Moreover, while 2% said incentive
programs did not go beyond the supervisor level,
20% of the participants mentioned they did not
have such programs for people below the middle
management rung.
LINE OF SIGHT - KEY TO INCENTIVE EFFECTIVENESS
While the ideal is to extend incentive eligibility to
the lowermost levels of the organization and get
as many employees in a formal plan as possible,
there are problems that cannot be wished away,
notes Maclean. Studies show that many incentive
plan participants don’t know how their
performance contributes to overall corporate
success. Besides, it becomes increasingly difficult
to define precisely individual performance
objectives that merit an incentive as one goes
further down into the organization. But
establishing “lines of sight” clearly showing
linkages between job performance and corporate
goals can rectify such problems. There’s no
problem in locating the line of sight for top
management. They know what is expected, have a
clear view and can easily identify what objectives
in their area of responsibility relate to the
corporate goals. Linkage becomes hazy and less
certain for lower management and individual
contributors. Maclean’s advice is to deploy
objectives-based, target incentives plans where
line-of-sight is clear. “Line of sight can be used as
a criterion to determine what somebody should be
getting,” he points out.
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INCENTIVE OBJECTIVES … GETTING IT “WRITE”
Diminishing line-of-sight isn’t the only shortcoming
when it comes to incentive plan effectiveness. Poorly
written and communicated objectives are often a major
drawback because employees are not trained or they are
trained in tools that don’t lend themselves to
compensation plans. It’s common to use the SMART
method to solve the problem.3 However, though such an
approach may work well for personal development, it is
inadequate for variable compensation plans, says
MacLean, who proposes utilizing what he calls the
MASTERS model.
MASTERS are similar to SMART goals but are more
demanding, stringent and tougher to achieve. Theystand for the following characteristics:
Measurable. Objectives have to be quantified with
the help of categorical measures/metrics
Aligned. Strategic objectives are aligned with
corporate goals
Stretch. Employees strive for breakthroughs not
something obtainable by reaching beyond routine
expectations.
Time-framed. It is the duration for an objective to
be achieved
End-Results. Outcomes are more important than
processes or activity
Scaled. By having minimum, target, and optimum
outcome tiers, organizations can help employees
move over a continuum of performance rather than
remain stationary at a point on that scale. In other
words, we may be able to say whether someone
partially met, fully met or exceeded the objectives.
There is a major difference in the way SMART and
MASTERS address the same employee in the same area.
For example, a typical SMART performance goal may
read “Conduct two customer service training courses in
3 SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevantand Time-based
the first quarter of 2006”; a MASTERS incentive
objective may be expressed as follows:
67% of trainees will achieve a 25% higher
customer service feedback rating within 30 days
of completing the customer service training course
Minimum acceptable performance is 33% of
trainees achieve at least a 25% higher
feedback rating
Optimum performance is 85% or more of trainees
achieve at least a 25% higher feedback rating.”
Clearly, MASTERS objectives focus on the
outcomes of the training, not the activity of
conducting the training sessions, and can be
aligned with a minimum payoff under anincentive plan.
SPOT-BONUS … AN UNDERUTILIZED MOTIVATIONAL
TOOL
In cases where line of sight is not clear he
recommends the use of spot-bonuses or team
incentives to recognize and reward contributions.
“It is important to spot non-management
performers & reward them”, Maclean says,
“especially if we don’t know what to do about
those employees who do not fit into such a
program.” Those employees who are not able to
participate in a target program are eligible for a
spot bonus. “Spot-bonuses are an effective tool
for motivating and rewarding employees who are
out of-line-of-sight,” says Maclean, “but it is best
to mange the process on a decentralized basis.”
Typically, the spot-bonus process should also have
the following features:
• Manager has a predetermined budget
• Guidelines are used for determining
allocations of budget
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• Approvals are submitted up the chain-of-
command either on a scheduled (e.g., each
month) or spontaneous basis
• Documentation (log events) from performance
management process is used to validate
recommendations
The timing of the payoff immediately reinforces desired
behaviors and is more effective than the annual
performance appraisal ritual. “Apart from the
recognition, employees also see greater value in receiving
the payment as a lump sum rather than receiving it over
26 pay periods,” observes Maclean.
When a spot-bonus program is based on pool funding,
Maclean recommends the following steps:
Determine percentage of total eligible employees, e.g.
50%. The purpose is to limit it so that it doesn’t turn up
like an entitlement in a merit program
Set up pre-determined reward levels; two or three levels
are sufficient
Calculate pool funding in a way that 20% are at a higher
reward level and 30% at a lower reward level
Top management should monitor the process by
tracking allocations against budget throughout the year
PAY FOR POTENTIAL TO RETAIN FUTURE STARS
A compensation program modeled on Maclean’s ideas
can take care of existing and predicted employee pay
packages. However, the talent management challenge
lies in designing programs around future stars that
ensure their retention. In the past, frequent and rapid
promotions ensured that future stars’ pay kept pace with
their potential. Today’s flatter organizations have
effectively capped promotional pay adjustments.
Maclean’s program also has a pay for potential aspect
that, in his words, articulates “a compensation formula
that from a process standpoint begins to merge with
talent management effort.”
To apply the pay for potential concept, a
traditional 9-box potential grid, as shown below,
may be helpful. Each cell has an employee
description in terms of potential and the level of
readiness. For example, the future star will be a
super star in the next couple of years.
Table 7
“By aligning the cells with target levels of pay,”
says Maclean, “we may get a good indication
about where the future star should be paid, which
is somewhere between 60-80% of the range at
this point for the job they are in.” Similarly, by
employing gap analysis technique “we can ensure
we are allocating what limited salary budget we
have to employees that have the largest target pay
gaps.” This approach helps align compensation
and succession planning systems for high
potential employees.
TALENT MANAGEMENT “ROUND TABLES”
The effort to integrate talent management and
compensation planning is gaining traction
through the emerging trend of using collaborative
“round tables”. Round tables are typically marked
by the following set of practices:
Managers develop preliminary recommendations
for direct reports on the basis of performance
ratings, the next career move, development plans
and the ability to do something new, all the time
keeping in mind salary and bonus
recommendations.
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The preliminary recommendations are consolidated into
cross-departmental round table groups where they are
reviewed by a team of three to five managers
The round table process “rolls” up the organization for
all employees or for a select group of high-potential
employees.
CONCLUSION
For those organizations that have made the shift from
old-school merit pay to incentive pay, linking incentive
plans to profitability and retention numbers is a
challenging undertaking. According to Steve Chinn
employees may still tend to focus on merit comparisons
making the whole process look disingenuous. He also
finds it troublesome to align everyone in theorganization to roll in the same direction when there are
multiple corporate goals. “The alternative,” says Chinn
“is to devise a total rewards programs that packs in
incentives based upon weightings for different
individuals for team involvement and organizational
involvement.” People lower in the organization can
derive a small percentage of incentive from the same
pool. However, the most important piece is to
communicate every month how employees are
performing against corporate goals.
Jim Finkelstein, President and CEO of FutureSense,
believes we should stop calling our programs pay for
performance unless we learn how to differentiate
performance and avoid creating conflict inside
organizations. “The fundamental flaw with the system,”
says Finkelstein “is that while we can differentiate
between shades of gray in employee performance, [in]
the traditional matrix we only identify two levels of
performance with a majority of employees bracketed in
the middle portion of the matrix.” It is important, he
adds, to first define performance and then differentiate
those rewards meant for various kinds of performance.
He suggests rewards should be made more meaningful
and motivating to affect long-term sustainable behavior.
The flip side of the story is that managers will have to
make more discerning decisions because most employees
will get little or nothing so that the high
performers get more.
It will be some time before we see a successful
switch from an "entitlement" mindset to an
incentive-based compensation, and utilize
compensation as a talent management tool. The
road ahead for successful organizations lies in
purging their outdated merit-based processes to
accommodate a more flexible and targeted
compensation program that not only values
employee performance even as it factors in their
future potential, and ties up the whole package
neatly to meet talent management and business
initiatives.
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CONTRIBUTORS
This white paper based on the Human Capital Institute
webcast Employee Motivation: Money Matters, New
Directions in Compensation and Incentives
PRESENTER
BARRY MACLEAN
COMPENSATION SOLUTIONS PRACTICE LEADER
VURV TECHNOLOGY, INC.
Barry has 30 years of combined corporate and consulting
knowledge/expertise having held the positions of
compensation director and director of human resource
development, as well as having been a principal with
Sibson & Co., and a managing principal with Mercer,
Willis Corroon and MacLean Associates before co-
founding InfoTechWorks. Barry has managed
compensation, performance management and career
planning client engagements with hundreds of
organizations including Fortune 500 companies (TRW,
Schering Plough, Hoffman LaRoche, Pitney Bowes),
financial institutions (New York Stock Exchange, Mellon
Bank, Prudential, Great West Life, BCBS plans), hospitals
and health systems (Mercy Medical Center, Thomas
Jefferson University Hospital, St Thomas Health System,
Doctors Hospital), as well as other notable companies
such as DisneyWorld, National Geographic and Ballys
Park Place and the International Union of Operating
Engineers on projects ranging from base pay strategy
and administration, to sales compensation, variable pay,
executive compensation and employee opinion surveys.
Barry is a graduate of Davidson College and did his
graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania.
PANELISTS
STEVE CHINN
DIRECTOR OF COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
NOVO NORDISK, INC.
Steve is responsible for the design, development and
implementation of all compensation and benefit
programs. He has over 20 years of Human
Resources experience, including recruiting for
People Express Airlines, a generalist for Sedgwick,
plc., and compensation & benefits with Blue Cross
and Blue Shield of NJ. Steve graduated from The
College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State
College) in 1983 with a B.A., majoring in
Psychology and Business. In 1992, Steve received
his M.S. from Rutgers University in Human
Resources and Industrial Relations and his
Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) from
WorldatWork (formerly the American
Compensation Association). In 1995 Steve
received his Senior Professional of Human
Resources for the Society of Human resource
Management.
JOSEPH DONALD, SR.
COMPENSATION CONSULTANT
U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Joe joined the Office of Personnel Management
after a 35 year career in the private sector. During
this career, he managed all facets of private sector
human resources programs for four major
corporations. Positions included responsibility for
staffing, pay management, benefits programs and
human resources systems. He has both managed
the implementation of programs in these areas
and designed and developed program upgrades
and improvements. He has designed and
implemented state of the art human resources
systems as well as sophisticated performance pay
programs. Additionally, he has designed and
managed the complete automation of recruiting
programs and, recently, he managed the
modernization of both defined contribution
(401k) and defined benefit (including cash
balance) retirement programs. He has spoken at
American Society of Training and Development
conferences, World at Work conferences and the
Human Resources Systems Professionals
conferences as well as other professional
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meetings. He holds a BA degree from Saint Michael's
College and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickenson University
with additional post-graduate work at Rutgers
University. He is a Chartered Life Underwriter.
Jim Finkelstein, President and CEO, FutureSense, Inc.
Jim's experience has included being a Partner in a Big
Five firm, a CEO of a professional services firm, a
corporate executive for Fortune 500 companies, and an
entrepreneur with his current company, FutureSense, Inc.
With close to 30 years of consulting and corporate
experience, Jim understands the convergence of
environment, culture, development and rewards in order
to improve business performance through people. He has
specialized in business and people strategy, motivation
and reward, and organizational assessment,development, communications and transformation. He
has applied his competencies in all areas that impact
people at work - from why they show up to why they
stay. He has worked for diverse industries - from health
care to high tech, building programs and providing
services to Boards of Directors, senior executives,
management and employees. Jim received his MBA in
Organization Behavior and Development from the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a
BA in Psychology and Economics from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut
MODERATOR
JOY KOSTA
DIRECTOR OF TALENT DEVELOPMENT AND LEADERSHIP
COMMUNITIES
THE HUMAN CAPITAL INSTITUTE
Joy brings twenty-five years of experience in multiple
facets of organizational development, human resources
and business management with an emphasis in customer
satisfaction, service quality, process improvement, and
applying the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance
Excellence. As founder and President of Performance
Partners in Health Care, a company dedicated to
building better patient experiences, she has authored
several curriculums in leadership and staff development,
and co-authored with Harold Bursztajn, MD
Senior Clinical Faculty member, Harvard Medical
School, Building a Treatment Alliance with
Patients and Families.
AUTHOR
SUMEET VARGHESE
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This White Paper is made possible by Vurv Technology,
sponsors of HCI’s Compensaion & Incentives Learning
Track.
ABOUT VURV TECHNOLOGY
Velocity Resource Group specializes in providing low
cost, highly effective Internet-based candidate sourcing
services. Velocity delivers low cost "overnight" services to
clients in response to their position requirements. The
simplicity, speed, quality, and effectiveness of Velocity Resource Group's services enable corporate clients to
focus their in-house recruitment talent on hiring
qualified candidates. In addition to Internet resume
sourcing, Velocity also offers base-level candidate
qualification (QAI) support and specialized record
retention capabilities to assist corporations tasked with
OFCCP compliance. The people + technology-driven
services provided by Velocity result in significant gains in
productivity at lower costs. For more information, please
visit: www.velocityresourcegroup.com
ABOUT THE HUMAN CAP I TAL
INST I TUTE
The Human Capital Institute is a catalyst for innovative
new thinking in talent acquisition, development anddeployment. Through research and collaboration, our
programs collect original, creative ideas from a field of
top executives and the brightest thought leaders in
strategic HR and talent management. Those ideas are
then transformed into measurable, real-world strategies
that help our members attract and retain the best talent,
build a diverse, inclusive workplace, and leverage
individual and team performance throughout the
enterprise.
The Human Capital Institute gratefully
acknowledges the financial and volunteer
contributions of our Underwriters. They include:
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- SAGE GROUP PLC
- SEQUENT, INC.
- SKILLSNET CORPORATION
- SOFTSCAPE
- SUCCESSFACTORS.COM
- TALEO CORPORATION
- UNICRU
- VALTERA
- VURV TECHNOLOGY, INC.
- WORKSTREAM, INC.