Rewarding technical staff

Last week I attended a CIPD forum on the topic of reward, retention and motivation of professionals and technical specialists. My feeling was that not much has changed over the years and that ‘techies’ present many of the same problems that they always have. In particular that many grading structures still value managing people and resources above technical skills with the consequent loss, or demotivation, of seasoned professionals who cannot progress to senior grades. Professional specialists are, apparently, deemed to be too involved in detail to be any good at delegation and management of teams. A cynic might point out that if those who are so good at delegation had paid more attention to detail we might not have had the lost tax disks, the T5 fiasco or the overrunning Liverpool Street closure. So what are the real issues for rewarding professional and technical staff?