Support on reward 
Watershed has provided support on employment law and managing people to Benchmark Sport since 2019. Benchmark Sport is the holding company for a global network of brands and businesses that develop sport-related networks in the business and social sectors. These brands include Think Beyond, Beyond Sport, SIG, NSE and TrybWorld.
In February 2023, Benchmark requested support from Watershed to develop and document a framework outlining the approach to job grading, base pay, bonus payments and the links to performance review and development processes. The goal was to provide staff with additional guidance on ‘how we do these things around here’ to be open and transparent and to improve engagement and motivation. We created their approach to:
- Job sizing and grading.
- Establishing base pay and when and how it is reviewed/increased. This included benchmarking and a tailored approach for graduates and apprentices.
- Bonus and incentive schemes.
- Performance review and development.
- Linking and aligning all these processes to demonstrate fairness, transparency and alignment with its values.
Results
The creation of formal processes, documentation and communications collateral setting out ‘how do we do things around here’. This created a more official framework, structure and methodology for colleagues with greater transparency, consistency fairness without being overly bureaucratic. This was important in what is a relatively small and very agile organisation.
Will Isemann, Finance Director said:
“This short, sharp piece of work gave us a strong foundation for how we communicate development, appraisal and pay frameworks to our colleagues. It allowed us to align this with our values and behaviours and bring everything together in a very transparent way.
The Watershed team helped us to get to a better place, more quickly than we could have done on our own.”
