Stats on rewards/incentives improving performance

honeypop

Hi all, something a bit different than the usual looking for work, or problems at work threads on here...

My DH is possibly looking at a promotion from 'general workforce' to management, but in order to be considered for this he has to give a presentation to some top bods on improving things at work (amongst other things). He has chosen a topic along the lines of using incentives or rewards to improve performance, as moral and motivation are pretty dire at the moment and the company is suffering due to work not being completed.

Anyway, I suggested putting in some statistics on how much performance improves when offering an appropriate reward or incentive, something like this anyway, and am having trouble finding some fairly recent figures for this. I get regular HR related newsletters emailed to me at work and know I read an article like this, complete with stats, a few months ago but can't seem to find it now.

Does anyone in the HR area of expertise have a link to something similar to what I am after?

DH's promotion rests on at least a good presentation, and I think giving some actual facts and figures with references would help. Please help us if you can!

Judith_W

I think I know what you're talking about. I can't find the specific info but employeebenefits.co.uk may be a good place to start for you

honeypop

Judith_W wrote: »

I think I know what you're talking about.

Lol - good! I do ramble a lot.

Zazen999

I am afraid that 'rewards and incentives' is not what they are looking for in that presentation. What they are looking for is for him to show that he has the management skills to manage people up or the ba11s to manage them out.

Try Hershey and Blanchard's Theory on management to see the different ways of managing people depending on their situation [interestingly called 'Situational Management'] as well as different management styles to get people on side and to look at Sorting Categories to back up the 'what people find important needs to be part of their performance plan' theory.

Anyone can throw rewards and incentives at staff; what it takes to really manage is true grit good management and people skills.

Googlewhacker

There are several problems with rewards and incentives, they are

1) if the incentive is yearlong and by the halfway point the employees know they are not going to hit this then what is the point in them trying to bust a gut
2)If the incentive is on a weekly basis it takes a large amount of admin
3)How do you provide an incentive to one section of the business but not another, how would you measure for example the work admin do over a labourer
4)Rewards/incentives are then seen as a right and over time you will either be villified for making them to hard or you will be giving them for no extra work.

They are just of the top of my head, if the business is struggling then IMO you need to be looking at costs, efficiancy rather than rewards and incentives should be something the employer gets without expecting it.

honeypop

Zazen999 wrote: »

I am afraid that 'rewards and incentives' is not what they are looking for in that presentation.

It is one of the topics they specified to choose from, so although I understand what you are saying, they did specifically want to see how a reward or incentive scheme may be able to work for them.

Zazen999 wrote: »

What they are looking for is for him to show that he has the management skills to manage people up or the ba11s to manage them out.

Try Hershey and Blanchard's Theory on management to see the different ways of managing people depending on their situation [interestingly called 'Situational Management'] as well as different management styles to get people on side and to look at Sorting Categories to back up the 'what people find important needs to be part of their performance plan' theory.

Anyone can throw rewards and incentives at staff; what it takes to really manage is true grit good management and people skills.

Googlewhacker wrote: »

There are several problems with rewards and incentives, they are

1) if the incentive is yearlong and by the halfway point the employees know they are not going to hit this then what is the point in them trying to bust a gut I think they are looking at monthly or quarterly targets.
2)If the incentive is on a weekly basis it takes a large amount of admin If the idea is approved, whichever manager (several for the same section) came up with it is responsible for administrating it, so they will bear this in mind.
3)How do you provide an incentive to one section of the business but not another, how would you measure for example the work admin do over a labourer For the section that is underperforming it is very easy to measure their output, there is a certain amount of 'jobs' to do each day, any that don't get done have to be recorded with a code to explain why. The only other staff are office based admin staff and managers for these sections, they are not target driven.
4)Rewards/incentives are then seen as a right and over time you will either be villified for making them to hard or you will be giving them for no extra work. This is one of the points I think he should discuss in the presentation.

They are just of the top of my head, if the business is struggling then IMO you need to be looking at costs, efficiancy rather than rewards and incentives should be something the employer gets without expecting it.

Thank you both for your comments, do you think it would be better for him to follow their topic and present on rewards etc, but then to follow it with how better management would be more productive (and less costly)? At least he covers what they asked for, but shows how it probably wouldn't work and what would be a better idea instead.

Googlewhacker

Just because they are saying to do it on incentives does not mean they are right, your OH should comment on what he believes...if he believes incentives are the way to go then do that, if he feels the company can improve in another way then I would certainly mention it at the end.

This way he does what he was asked but also showed initiative. However if he goes of at a tangent he needs to be correct and tactful and try avoiding slating of the company (unless the management are open about the situation)

honeypop

They certainly are open about the situation.

About 75% of the management team have left over the past month or so (jumped or pushed following a head office review of the poor performance), and they are looking to build a new one up and want thinkers and do-ers, the others were lazy and couldn't manage someone up or out if their job depended on it, which it did, so they ended up leaving.

Googlewhacker wrote: »

Just because they are saying to do it on incentives does not mean they are right, your OH should comment on what he believes...if he believes incentives are the way to go then do that, if he feels the company can improve in another way then I would certainly mention it at the end.

This way he does what he was asked but also showed initiative.

I understand what you mean about just doing it on this because they said to, I think he wanted to show them it could work because they wanted it to, but he has much better ideas, and I think it would be good for him to say how these would also work for them.

The other topics to choose from were things like money saving on the branch by cutting use of electricity and improving admin processes (he has no office experience so no good on that one). I think the one he chose would be best to showcase his ideas for better management (they put him on the nation-wide company management training programme recently).

Googlewhacker

honeypop wrote: »

I understand what you mean about just doing it on this because they said to, I think he wanted to show them it could work because they wanted it to, but he has much better ideas, and I think it would be good for him to say how these would also work for them.

The other topics to choose from were things like money saving on the branch by cutting use of electricity and improving admin processes (he has no office experience so no good on that one). I think the one he chose would be best to showcase his ideas for better management (they put him on the nation-wide company management training programme recently).

He can twist any topic into another and as long as there is not a time period then I would do it. What is the worst that happens, they say 'no that is not what we wanted, you will stay where you are job wise'

At least he tried then and can move on knowing that he got his ideas across and if no one wants to take them on then that is upto them.

Just don't say anything that is sackable!!!!

Maybe look to do 80% on the topic they want and then 20% on other ideas

eamon

Top management and their ilk seem to like rewards & incentive schemes when it applies to them. Rewards and incentives schemes for factory/offices/call centres/warehouse all tend to be fiendishly complicated as top managers and their ilk don't like the idea of paying bonus.

Seriously as others have said these schemes tend to run out of steam and don't solve the issue of poor performance. If this is the topic given to your DH then if I was him then I would rattle off why these schemes have a high failure rate and then talk about what would make a difference. He could do this by studying the work process as it is now. Identify what works well what doesn't work and arrive at solutions.