Examples Of Team-Based Incentive Programs

Creating and managing effective teams in today’s work environment is much different than it was just a short time ago. With each generation of American workers come new ideas, rules, and methodologies that must be considered when developing an effective team. Some of the newer ideas may have been foreign to managers even ten years ago. An example of this is that many companies today are becoming more socially responsible. A recent article in Incentive states, “Social responsibility, it seems, is the new signing bonus” (Flanagan, p4, 2006). Rarely are managers given a

If each team member meets their individual goals and deadlines, they will receive some smaller pre-defined bonus. This could be either a set amount or multiplier of the team bonus. (ex: 5 Individual Initiatives Met = 0.5x multiplier to team bonus).

Group Incentive Plan: It is set in place to promote helpful, combined behavior among employees. Through this company a group incentive plan assists in nurturing relationships among their staff member, inspiring them to discover ways to collaborate in a shared environment in order to be successful. The method is able to create a stronger team, brainstorming and building a entrusted sense of project ownership for everyone.

A Performance-Based Pay system is an increasingly popular compensation method used by organizations to increase productivity. A goal for all companies is to try and remain competitive and control costs, this is a reason for performance-based pay systems becoming more popular. This type of system attempts to link compensation to performance. (Gena Richter, 2002) These systems are directly tied to organization or individual performance and are most effective when based on objective measures of quantity or quality of performance. If we wish to have a direct impact on work motivation, it must be linked directly to the performance of desired behaviors. In order for to put this type of system into place, performance evaluations must be conducted regularly , as well as training and development for those with performance that isn't quite up to par. These additional resources will be necessary for our organization if we implement a performance based pay system. (William B. Bernathy, Ph. D., 2004)

Many companies are cutting back to survive the constant changes of this economy and because of that employee compensation is challenging to provide an adequate amount that gives an incentive to the top talents. Within Owens & Minor incentives such as, a merit increase is one of the compensation programs designed to reward its employees for their performance, but there is an absence of reward for their progress because teammates are only awarded yearly on their anniversary date depending on the grade they receive. A teammate must receive a satisfactory or higher to receive a raise from the company during their appraisal as they reflect on their past achievements and weaknesses throughout the year. The lack of a compensating

Have a one-on one meeting with the employees and leaders of the departments that are not meeting expectations to provide additional training, corrective actions, or otherwise work together with that particular team to develop a plan to improve, which would further empower the teams (Newstrom, 2015). For the teams who are meeting production goals in their department develop a rewards and recognition program so that the department or specific employees who have gone above and beyond could be recognized. This monthly awards and recognition program could replace the monthly financial bonus by providing another type of motivational and reward factor, which could be understood through the Equity Model, in which the employees would still see reward outcomes from their monthly inputs, in addition to the potential of a financial bonus (Newstrom,

To foster competitiveness and deliver better results, there is a program called STACK where employees are ranked based on the work done and their incentive is decided based on it. Better the rank, better the incentives.

During the brainstorming sessions, a senior leader requested an incentive plan be implemented. The leader suggested a gift card incentive be offered to any and all team members who received 100% quality over a three month time frame. After discussions with the two on the floor leaders it was decided that a one size incentive program would not be beneficial. The quality coaches learnings strategic management classes had shown that long range incentives, were not beneficial tools for team or individual motivation. By explaining that any team member who had not achieved a 100% quality mark in the beginning of a month may not be as inclined to stay on track for 100% for the remainder of the month. This would be even harder to maintain if the expectation of a job adequately performed is less than 100% quality. In order to inspire a team to do their best throughout the month, a different program should be organized. This program should recognize both the team members desire to perform well, balanced with the likelihood of human error.

Reward Management (RM) has been defined as the distribution of monetary and non-monetary rewards to employees in an effort to align the interests of the employees, the organisation, and its shareholders (O’Neil, 1998). In addition O’Neil (1998) also suggests that a RM system can serve the purpose of attracting prospective job applicants, retaining valuable employees, motivating employees, ensuring legal requirements relating to direct and indirect rewards are not violated, assisting the company in achieving human resource and business objectives, and ultimately assisting the organisation in obtaining a competitive advantage.

Key Finding 1: Approximately 90% of companies maintain some type of reward and recognition program. The majority of companies use these programs to create a positive work environment, improve employee morale, and motivate high performance. Research suggests that when designed and implemented properly, reward and recognition positively affects an organization’s bottom line. The Majority of Companies Maintain a Reward and Recognition Program According to a 2003 survey conducted by WorldatWork and the National Association for Employee Recognition (NAER), the majority of companies maintain

Although research generally confirms that pay-for-performance plans can influence greater outcomes, it is unclear how effective different pay plans are relative to each other (Park, 2012). Like most things in business, compensation is something that requires evaluation, study, assessment, strategy, modeling and integration.  Achieving a pay for performance culture does not happen without paying attention to the behaviors, activities, rewards and motivations that have to be linked and reinforced through a well engineered and successfully executed process.  Actually if that process does not tie rewards to shareholder financial objectives, employ the proper mix of compensation elements, result in meaningful dollars, embrace performance that employees can impact and are effectively communicated and reinforced, then the results it produces will likely fall short (Vision Link Advisory Group, 2013).

To motivate employees to work towards reaching organizational goals, managers frequently depend on some form of enticement. Beyond monetary compensation, awards and additional types of acknowledgment can be given, and the ability to choose a work schedule is a possibility. A reasonable pay system, which would be an incentive for individuals and groups to achieve organizational goals, is a hardship manager’s face (Jones & George, 2011). Within the company that I work for, every quarter awards are presented to Customer Service Agents who have maintained a 95 percent or above quality score. Monetary awards are given out as well as time off coupons.

Keeping employees motivated in addition to creating incentives and/or additional ways for employees to receive more compensation will create better performance overall within an organization. Contrary if company B gives their employees incentives to perform, without any motivational tactics they probably will not have as many top performances as company A, in addition the company may only seek short term rewards verses have long term success. Lack of motivation for employees within an organization, can cause long term damage for the company’s success. Different things motivate everyone; therefore there should be a system in place to keep employees motivated for the long term success of the company. In the MBM textbook under the concept of incentives, compensation, and motivation, there are a couple of different views of how it should be applied within an organization. We will discuss The Social Role of Profit, Personal Profit and Losses, and the way Market-Based Management view how incentives, compensation, and motivation should be applied and the things that effectively drive employees’ actions while at work.

Aguinis (2013) discusses that fact that team-based organizations do not necessarily outperform work teams or teams in general. A reward system we learn, should not only target individual performance, but teams as a whole (p. 295). An ideal performance management system includes such characteristics as strategic and context congruence, thoroughness, the ability to identify effective and ineffective performance, inclusiveness, standardization and ethicality. The reward system applied to the State of Georgia, exhibits many similar characteristics of an ideal

Creating and implementing of incentive pay system supports to solve organizational problems to align the preferences of business and employees. In addition, the system serves as an organizing tool to identify and attract the most capable employees since companies need to deliver the product or