Overview Of Pay For Performance Incentive Commerce Essay

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Today, tying employee's pay to their performance on the job is widely popular. Proponents of pay-for-performance programs will tempt to and retain better employees and offer incentives to motivate and reward improved performance. They view uniform employee salary schedules as ineffective in attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of effective employees and as out of touch with compensation practices in other industries that tie salary to employee performance. Pay for performance incentive is to design to overcome the limitations of current reimbursement arrangements by aligning financial reward with improved outcomes. It is incentive programs differentiate payment among providers based on performance of quality and efficiency measures so that desired outcomes occur through changed behavior.

The label pay for performance covers a wide-spectrum of compensation systems that can be clustered two general categories such as merit plans and variable plans. The effects of performance-based pay plans on individual and organizational performance cannot be easily to relief from the broader context of an organization's structure, management strategies and personnel systems. Pay represents by the most significant and disputation element in the employment relationship, and is of equal interest to the employer, employee and government. It is important for employer because it represents a significant part of his costs, is increasingly important to his employees' performance and to competitiveness, and it will affect his ability to recruit and retain a labor force of quality. For the employee, it is fundamental to his standard of living and is a measure of the value of his services or performance. For the government, it affects aspects of macro-economic stability such as employment, inflation, purchasing power and socio-economic development in general. The Pay for performance system helps to foster a healthy spirit of competition amongst the employees and is instrumental in enhancing their motivation level.

Pay for Performance is the best resource to date on the issues of whether these concepts work and how they can be applied most effectively in the workplace. Performance-related pay systems are based on the organizations that can accurately measure the individual team or the organization outputs, as well as the individual and team outputs contribute to organizational performance.

Types of Performance Pay

Merit Pay

Merit pay or a merit raise is any salary increase the firm awards to an individual employee based on his or her individual performance. It makes sense to reward more productive employees for their increased contributions to the organization, in the interests in fairness, but also with an eye to trying to retain the best employees in a company.

Merit pay made from few basic forms. Firstly,Â annual salary increasesÂ can be based on some sort of assessment of the employee's productivity or performances. Those judged as "better" will receive greater salary increases which maintain over the years. The second method of rewarding "superior" employees is to use aÂ bonus program or system, where a very productive employee will receive some sort of bonus payment, which is a onetime, non-recurring event. The third approach involvesÂ direct compensation for quantified production. In the direct compensation for quantified production, one nice thing is that the link between objectively determined production and pay or compensation is clearer, better defined and requires less judgment. Other than that, merit pay allows the employer to differentiate pay given to high performers and allows the employer to satisfactorily reward an employee for accomplishing a task.

Incentive Payments

Incentive Payment is a scheme in which rewards are offered to managers or other employees conditional on certain performance targets being met. TheÂ incentive paymentsÂ are direct payments made under theÂ National Wool ActÂ (P.L. 83-690, Title VII) to producers of wool and mohair, which were similar toÂ deficiency paymentsÂ made to producers of grains and cotton. The incentive payment rate was the percentage needed to bring the national average return to producers (the market price plus the incentive payment) up to the annually set national support price. Producers with higher market receipts got larger support payments. This created an incentive to increase output and to improve quality.

Group Incentives and Productivity Gain-Sharing

Group incentives are groups attempt to empower people and tend to have a levelling effect on labours' performance. Rather than restrict production, the group pressures the superior producer to handle more job assignments. Group pressures may likewise have an upward levelling effect upon the operator who would be satisfied with relatively low individual earnings. Therefore, average group output often is higher than average individual output. Besides, productivity gain-sharing system is based on the premise that basic to successful productivity enhancement in the long term is sharing productivity gains with employees by linking a part of earnings to productivity to achieve such multiple goals as

increasing labour productivity

improving employees' living standards

strengthening employee commitment

improving labour-management relations

securing flexibility in labour costs

maintaining corporate viability

take a long-term view of growth

A successful gain-sharing program relies on two factors-formula and training. There is no one-size-fits-all gain-sharing plan; each program is custom made to fit an individual company's needs. Not only are productivity and quality factored into the formula, but other costs such as the cost of worker's compensation or the reduction in order-to-shipment lead times can also be added. And in order for the program to work, all levels of the workforce must be educated about their respective roles in gain-sharing through proper training methods. In general, gain-sharing systems are based on a participatory approach, and can be used to create or reinforce participatory practices. In addition to helping reduce manufacturing costs, gain-sharing can also enable a company to cut costs due to poor quality. Evidence indicates that such systems

improve coordination, term work and knowledge-sharing

focus on cost saving

facilitate changes (e.g. in technology) needed to improve performance which are seen as being directly related to higher earnings

result in expectations by employees of better management and planning

Result in contributions of ideas by employees

Profit sharing

Profit sharing plans can be a powerful tool in promoting financial security in retirement. It is a valuable option for businesses considering a retirement plan, providing benefits to employees and their employers. And is a way to rewards the hard work and dedication of those Distributors. This incentive is a one-off additional annual bonus where the Company puts part of the country's profit into a pot and Distributors can qualify to earn a share. Employer distributes a set percentage of the company's profits to the eligible employees. The amount distributed to each of the employee may be weighted by the employee's base salary so that employees with higher base salaries receive a slightly higher amount of the shared pool of profits. This is normally done on an annual basis. Employers may distribute the portion of its profits immediately or it may set up a series of accounts for employees and defer the profit sharing until employees retire. This saving plan offered by most of the companies to their workers in which a part of the firm's profits is funneled into a tax-deferred employee retirement account. These plans give many employees an additional incentive to be productive. The profit sharing is to give employees an incentive to work for the company's profitability.

A profit sharing plan is something that may motivate some people to work harder, but, if the company shares the profit with every employee, then there will be some people who choose not to put forth extra effort. An individual incentive program, it will motivate staff to exert more effort because extra compensation is paid only to those who perform well. A company will see a rise in personnel productivity when you use an individual incentive program. There are some advantages that can brings groups of employees to work together toward a common goal such as success of the company. Other than that it can helps employees focus on profitability and enhances commitment to organizational goals. While an incentive program should not be used as the only measuring tool for an employee's production, it should consideration when an employee regularly misses out on easily attained incentive payments

Short -Term Incentives

Managers play a crucial role in divisional and companywide profitability, and most firms therefore put considerable thought into how to reward them. Most managers get short-term and long-term incentives in addition to salary. For firms offering short-term incentive plans, most of all 96% provide those incentive by cash. For those offering long-term incentives, about 48% offer them as stock options.

As noted most firms have annual bonus plans aimed at motivating managers' and executives' short-term performance. Short-term bonuses can easily in plus or minus adjustments of 25% or more to total pay. There are three basic issue to consider when awarding short-term incentives, such as eligibility, fund size, and individual awards.

Most firms include both top and lower managers, and mainly decide who's eligible in several ways. Most base eligibility on a combination of factors, including job title, base salary, and discretionary considerations. Some simply base eligibility on job level or job title. A few base eligibility on salary level alone. Employer should also consider about how to decide the total amount of bonus money to make available - fund size. They use a straight percentage to create the short-term incentive fund .Others use a deductible formula, on the assumption that the fund should start to accumulated only after the firm has meet the specified level of earnings. The third task is to decide the actual individual award. Typically, a target bonus is set for each eligible position. The actual reward then reflects the person's performance.

Short term incentive pay is determined a variety of factors such as:

existing company practice

compensation committee discretion

competitive peer assessment in the employer's industry; previous work experience

Future growth revenue projections of the company, just to name a few

Often, the executive will receive a low base salary and a high percentage bonus that is most often tied to overall company and individual performance during each year of employment

Long -Term Incentives

Employers use long-term incentive to inject a long-term perspective into their executives' decisions. Long Term Cash Incentive Pay is a performance driven award that pays compensation based on a three to five year performance period and calculated as a multiple of base salary. Performance can be measured against an industry peer group of companies and the projected long term growth of the company. It also called as "Performance Share Plans" are the most popular form of long-term share award. It has also become increasingly common over the same period for companies to make at least part of annual bonus awards to senior executives in the form of deferred share awards. The actual number of long-term incentives that will be granted to the eligible employees depends on the performance of the individual employee. Compensation is not only a major expense; it is the companies have to focus the employee's behavior or performance. For that reason compensation strategy must be strongly and irrevocably tied to the overall business strategy's short and longer-term objectives.

Popular long-term incentives include cash, stock, stock option, and stock appreciation rights. A long-term incentive plan is necessary to maintain an appropriate mix of short and long-term incentives. Long-term incentives link financial rewards to the Company's longer-term performance. Most of the companies use the stock option as rewards that reflected long term performance. Stock option is the right to purchase a stated number of shares of a company stock at today's price at some time in the future.

The foundation to a successful long-term incentive plan is to constantly review the objectives of the organization. A diligent and consistent analysis of key tenants such as the company mission and vision statement, core values, culture and ever changing business environments will enable to be in an ideal position when implementing or revising the long-term incentive program.