About your masterclass leaders

Duncan Brown, Director Reward Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Duncan has over 15 years consulting experience in leading projects concerned with the development and delivery of pay and reward strategies and their major components, including job evaluation systems, pay and grading structures, pay adjustment methods, bonus and incentive plans, total reward approaches and reward communications. He has also regularly worked on related HR initiatives including performance management processes, development programmes and competency frameworks, and researched extensively into the relationships between reward and HR practices and performance.

His experience on job evaluation includes everything from the development of major computerised points factor systems including JEGs, the Higher Education Role Analysis method and a system covering management and professional staff at BT, through to the use of simpler classification and market slotting methods for organisations including The Royal Hospital, Chelsea and GlaxosmithKline. Past clients have also included Shell, the Cabinet Office and The United Nations.

Duncan writes extensively on reward issues in journals including People Management, Personnel Today, Compensation and Benefits Review and WorldatWork Journal, with his books including Paying for Contribution, the CIPD Guide to Bonus and Incentives and Strategic Reward: Making it Happen. Personnel Today placed him in its list of the UK’s Top 10 HR Power Players in 2006.

Paul Bissell, Managing Director, Strategic Rewards Solutions
formerly Head of Rewards, Nationwide

Immediately before setting up his consultancy, Strategic Rewards Solutions, Paul was Head of Rewards, Nationwide. A Head of Rewards, he was responsibile for all aspects of the fixed and variable package throughout the Nationwide Group. This included, executive remuneration, base pay, salary progression, salary management systems, bonus schemes, marketplace matching, flexible benefits, total remuneration statements, organisational design, job evaluation, performance management, equal pay auditing and recognising loyalty.

His work won many awards for innovation, communication, diversity and use of new communication, diversity and use of new technologies from professional bodies and the Government.

To achieve this challenging agenda Paul worked closely with a team of 10 specialists, as well as with colleagues in Employee Engagement, Learning and Development, the Business Partners and Senior Managers throughout the business.

Paul joined Nationwide in November 1975 as a management trainee. After a number of branch manager posts he joined personnel and development in 1987 as one of the founding members of the retail training function. He has worked as a trainer, training manager; operational and corporate consultant and in addition has done specialist work developing the “ViewPoint” employee opinion survey, management information systems and manpower planning. He is a Companion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and has a masters degree in the Management of Human Resources. He is also a former vice president – rewards of the CIPD, a current member of the CIPD Nominations and Professional Policy Committee as well as a member of the CIPD rewards forum and vice presidents committee.

Mark Pettican, Human Resources Director, Telindus

Mark Pettican joined Telindus, part of Belgacom, in April 2006 as Human Resources Director overseeing reward and remuneration, talent management and learning, strategic business partnering, payroll, and recruitment and performance management.

In this role, Mark is committed to making a difference and driving HR value in line with business strategy. His focus is to ensure that learning, development and reward are integrated as a key part of the organisational agenda, and to provide an infrastructure and guidance to Telindus in all aspects of employee interaction.

Prior to Telindus, Mark worked for VIA Networks where he aligned HR Strategy on a pan European basis and coordinated HR activity across several company acquisitions. He also spent time as an independent consultant at several organisations including Colt & Telstra Europe where, following various acquisition activity, he ran a successful cultural alignment programme. Mark has also held senior HR positions at KPNQwest and Telewest.

Trevor Blackman
Royal Bank of Scotland

Trevor Blackman leads the team responsible for the development and implementation of Compensation and Benefits policy across the Royal Bank of Scotland group.

Prior to joining the RBSG in May 1994, he spent ten years working with Hay Management Consultants in their offices in London, Philadelphia and Glasgow.

Before his metamorphosis into a reward specialist, he spent time as a geography teacher, a trainee store manager with Marks & Spencer, a bacon buyer for J Sainsbury and a sales operations manager in Borneo. He holds an MA in anthropology from Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland.