Chapter 11 Flashcards
Pay-for-performance plans signal a movement away from what?
> Signal a movement away from entitlement—sometimes a very slow movement—toward pay that varies with some measure of individual or organizational performance.
What pay components (that we have already discussed) aren’t included in the pay-for-performance category?
> base pay and across-the-board increases
Is merit pay a pay-for-performance plan? If so, how often is it used in Canada?
> Merit pay is a pay-for-performance plan used for more than 80% of employees in Canada.
What used to be primarily a compensation tool for top management is gradually becoming more prevalent for what other employees?
> more prevalent for lower-level employees too
What are the 4 variable pay plans most often used in Canada?
1) Individual cash bonus / incentive
2) Team-based incentive
3) Profit-sharing
4) Gain-sharing
The prevalence of variable pay can be traced to two trends - what are they?
1) First, global competition forces North American firms to cut costs and/or increase productivity.
2) Second, today’s fast-paced business environment means that workers must be willing to adjust what they do and how they do it.
Are pay-for-performance plans short-term, long-term, individual, or group? can they be all?
> Pay-for-performance plans can be short term or long term, and can be individual or group plans.
> Short-term incentive plans are based on attainment of financial, operational, and individual goals during a period of 12 months or less.
> Long-term plans are based on attainment of goals over a period of longer than 12 months.
> These goals can be individual goals, or something a group of people have to work together to achieve.
What sector are pay-for-performance plans most prevalent in?
> They are more prevalent in the private sector than in the public sector.
> According to the Conference Board of Canada, over 90% of private sector organizations have one or more short-term incentive plans versus about only 46% of public sector organizations.
> Similarly, almost half of private sector organizations have long-term incentive plans in place, versus only 11% in public sector organizations.
What is a merit pay system?
> A merit pay system links increases in base pay (called merit increases) to how highly employees are rated on a subjective performance evaluation.
What is a key feature of merit pay?
> A key feature of a merit pay increase is that, unlike other variable pay programs (short-term or long-term), the increase is added into base pay.
Merit pay has its detractors, who argue what about it?
> Merit pay has its detractors, who argue that it is expensive and that it doesn’t achieve the desired goal: improving employee and corporate performance.
> Some have also argue that sometimes merit pay based on performance are too small to motivate performance.
In practice, tying pay to performance requires three things.
1) First, there must be some definition of performance. Whether performance is measured by behaviours, competencies, or traits, there must be agreement that higher levels of performance will have a positive impact on achieving corporate strategic objectives.
2) Second, there must be a continuum that describes different levels from low to high on the performance measure, and
3) third, there must be decisions regarding how much of a merit increase will be given for different levels of performance.
A more complex guideline ties pay not only to performance but also to what?
> Position in the pay range
What are the two patterns that are evident in the position pay range merit guideline?
1) First, as would be expected in a pay-for-performance system, lower performance is tied to lower pay increases.
2) The second relationship is that pay increases at a decreasing rate as employees move through a pay range. (For the same level of performance, employees low in the pay range will receive higher percentage increases than employees who have progressed farther through the range.)
Once salary budgets are allocated to each subunit manager, they become a constraint - what does this mean?
> a limited fund of money that each manager has to allocate to their employees.
Typically, merit increase guidelines about what decisions?
> Typically, merit increase guidelines are used to help managers make these allocation decisions.
> Merit increase grids help ensure that different managers grant consistent increases to employees with similar performance ratings and in the same position in their ranges.
Designing merit guidelines involves answering four questions. what are they?
1) First, what should the poorest performer be paid as an increase?
2) The second question involves average performers. How much should they be paid as an increase?
3) Third, how much should the top performers be paid?
4)
What can be used to differ the size of pay differentials?
> matrices can differ in the size of the differential between levels of performance.
> A larger jump between levels would signal a stronger commitment to recognizing performance with higher pay increases. (larger differentials also cost more!)
What is the goal in merit pay differentials?
> The goal is to continuously adjust employee pay so that it is appropriately positioned relative to the market—an employee with a consistently high performance rating should move above the market median and range midpoint, whereas an employee with consistently average performance should be near the range midpoint.
Lump-sum bonuses differ from merit pay increases in that:
> in that employees receive an end-of-year bonus that does not build into base pay.
How are lump-sum bonuses viewed?
> Because employees must earn this increase every year, it is viewed less as an entitlement than as merit pay.
How do lump-sum pay bonuses provide employers with a way to make pay vary more in line with variations in company performance?
> It also provides employers a way to make pay vary more in line with variations in company performance by reducing fixed salary costs that can grow rapidly through merit pay increase.
It should come as no surprise that cost-conscious firms report switching to which bonus plans?
> It should come as no surprise that cost-conscious firms report switching to lump-sum bonuses.
By giving lump-sum bonuses for several years, a company is essentially doing what?
> By giving lump-sum bonuses for several years, a company is essentially freezing base pay.