Interview with George Makris, lead reward manager and head of executive compensation, Direct Line Group

George Makris, lead reward manager and head of executive compensation at Direct Line Group, found his way into the reward industry by accident.

After graduating from university, he became a research analyst at Manifest and a corporate governance analyst at Institutional Shareholder Services. In these early roles, he was responsible for assessing corporate reward structures and executive payroll and remuneration arrangements for various organisations.

“I had regular engagement with the organisations I was analysing, and I used to get in touch with reward directors and advisers while working for investors,” says Makris. “Eventually I decided to make the move to the other side, starting with consulting. That’s where I have spent the biggest part of my career to date.”

Makris’s role at insurer Direct Line Group is his first in-house post, following three years as an analyst and seven years as a consultant. “The overall objective of the role isn’t different, but the day-to-day responsibilities are,” he says.

“As a reward consultant, the biggest objective is to come up with new solutions or designs, but not necessarily see them all the way through. The biggest two changes are being able to produce end-to-end initiatives and day-to-day stakeholder engagement. As a consultant, you’ve got a number of [employer] clients, but here the business is your main stakeholder and it happens on a daily basis.”

In his role, Makris wears two hats: head of executive compensation and team leader for the reward team. He is already hard at work on the directors’ remuneration report under the new executive pay reporting regulations, which were introduced 1 October 2013, as well as rolling out the implementation of, and communications around, a new grading system for all staff.

“That involves communicating with staff about their new grade and how it affects them personally,” he says. “We also link our current reward proposition into the new grades. It’s about people being able to see their new grades.”

Direct Line Group, which separated from its parent group Royal Bank of Scotland, in September 2012, began the process of recruiting Makris about 10 months ago. “I was approached,” he says. “I wasn’t actively looking for it, but it has turned out to be a good fit in terms of the organisation and my own skills.

“There was a good match there in terms of the organisation wanting someone who had worked through change programmes.

“For me, it was an environment that wasn’t exactly a ‘green field’, because a lot of the design work had been done in terms of the separation from the RBS Group, but it was more a ‘brown field’ environment, so coming into something where things are still relatively new, but with opportunity to take things through to the next stage.”