Designing an incentive compensation plan is one of the most profitable tools managers can use to motivate employees to spend time visiting the extra mile; that is, to expend added effort to go over and beyond the cod. However, small unintended mistakes in establishing the rules of your incentive plan can significantly reduce how much the theory motivates workers.
I have used incentive compensation plans for many in doing so, I’ve learned plenty about what to do, but also by what not to do. For example, if there is often a loophole in the plan, I promise you your employees will find it on day one, so pay special attention to Tip Number 7.
Before you publish your incentive pay plan, find the following 12 tips:
1. Don’t intermingle incentive pay with regular expend. Pay incentive compensation with a separate check so that should an incentive plan be terminated, it won’t appear the employees that enterprise has cut their shell out for.
2. Don’t run incentive plans indefinitely. If you do, they will tend lose some of their motivational influence over employee behavior.
3. To motivate an employee, incentive pay must represent a significant portion of the employee’s total pay. For example, an opportunity to earn a $500 monthly incentive check will not motivate an employee earning $8,000 per period.
4. Cash or incentive pay is only one way to incent employees. Consider also: Premiums, travel, dinner for two, a weekend for a couple at a nice hotel, days with pay, etc.
5. When starting a new incentive plan, advise all affected employees sooner rather than later that management will evaluate how long to continue based after the plan has been in force for 90 24 hour periods.
6. Resist putting ceilings on incentive pay plans.
7. Before you announce a new incentive plan, ask several loyal employees to review great deal . plan for loopholes. Run the numbers and then run them again to make sure that you have thought about all possibilities.
8. Pit employees’ performance against a quota or a goal, never against each other.
9. Incent behaviors you want discover more of.
10. Incentives aren’t an substitute for proactive management activity. Managers have to manage whether or no incentive pay plan’s in place.
11. Don’t over react if any person employee receives a wind fall when he or she hit a home execute.
12. Decide upfront if you ‘re going to deduct taxes before issuing incentive paychecks. Make your selection clear to all affected employees beforehand of kicking off incentive plan.