This is what I was thinking. Make a trade of sorts. I’ll give you my $500 if you give me yours.
They’ll never expect The Spanish Inquisition.
Why does upper management do this kind of thing? When I was a shift manager at Pizza Hut the higher ups came up with a fabulous decision. We were going to do whatever the customer wanted no matter what! Did they want a refund on a pizza after they ate the entire thing? Give it to them! Did they want to write a check with no ID? Perfect! We were going to be the place you go because they have incredible customer service! I explained that these things were not incredible customer service and that we gained nothing from these actions except a larger selection of trouble customers. You know the ones who write bad checks and call and make false claims against the delivery driver so they can get free pizza? Those were the customers we were going to gain. I was told that was nonsense and that the changes would go ahead as planned. It lasted 6 weeks before they started losing so much money they had to cancel that policy. I swear working that job during college is a huge part of the reason I stayed in school and got my degree so I wouldn’t have to work that kind of job forever.
Why am I reminded of giving out valentines in grade 6?
I too would love follow-up to hear how this went over. In may experience, people will likely give the bonuses to their co-workers who they like and hang out with at lunch. Either way, it should be totally anonymous because otherwise, as has been said, the hot girls will get all the money from the sleazy guys trying to pick up on them by saying “you know, I voted to have you get the money Melissa because of your (huge tits) high quality work”. At one of my old jobs, we had a girl who keep almost getting fired as a secretary for showing up late, trying to get other people to do her work, etc. I recently heard she got a technical position in the engineering group because apparently they needed a hot chick around…
To translate the corporate-speak:“We’re Management and we don’t know who the hell you people are, what you do and how well you’re doing it.”
Someone in upper management is taking a course on game theory and needed an experiment to write about.
I worked for four years with a major hotel company and part of my job was incentives. I even had to get Six Sigma certification for this.
Here’s the key to a good bonus plan
First of all it can’t run contrary to overall profit.
This means no incentive for things like elimination of overtime. Why? Because there is good overtime and BAD overtime. and it’s very difficult to distinguish between the two.
Second you need measurable goals. The goal MUST be measurable and not subject to opinion.
The OP sounds like they want to tie goals into a group dynamic. I can tell you this NEVER works. It’s OK if it’s one part of an overall incentive plan.
For instance, had a plan that has, a measurable component where you earn your bonus.
Then have the group dynamic be a multiplier effect.
For instance, you’re goal is to sell a million dollars worth of services. Each dollar you sell is one point.
Then let’s say for each person in your group that meets his goal, you get a multiplier of 1. So if there are six people in your group and your personal goal is one million, if four of the six people in your group meet their goal (which may or may not be the same as yours) you could get a multiplier of 4. So your points would be
1,000,000 personal points X 4 or 4,000,000 points.
(then each point would be worth so many cents)
Each person gets a personal goal that is measurable and realistic.
When I did the incentives we had three components to incentive.
Individual, departmental and total. You’re individual was the largest part of your bonus and you could collect it all even if you’re department or the hotel as a whole failed. But you see with the multiplier effect, you had the incentive to help others as well.
:eek: …oh god… I’m so sorry dude, I had no idea.
<hug>
It’s going to be alright… would you like some contact numbers for SSS (Six Sigma Survivors) members? They can really help in getting through it.
Oh god, so true. The VP told my manager that the department couldn’t have any overtime at all. She burnt out and walked out on the job after having to do all the leftover work herself for no extra pay. The VP has since relaxed the overtime policy.
Well, you’ll certainly find out who can set up informal social networks. You may find out who is willing to scam co-workers. As in, promise as many more than four people as possible that they’ll swap.
I’d say that one way to circumvent it would be to pick four people that everyone trusted, vote them all the money, and then have them re-disburse it, but the taxes on the bonus would screw that up.
It would be kind of cool if everyone could pick the four people who needed the money the most and just vote for them, but that wouldn’t happen. It would illustrate what a joke the system was, but it would be almost impossible to pull off.
So far, the gangs of five seem like the best bet.
It could work quite well in a situation where there are communal responsibilities rather than each person having their own separate tasks that don’t overlap. In that kind of workplace, flexibility, cooperation, and teamwork are vitally important to keeping the place running well, and they’re the same qualities that make a person popular with coworkers. The person who busts ass all day, who can and will do anything that needs to be done, who will trade days with me if I’m sick or have something going on, gets a lot of bonus money. The person who, if they were a deckhand on the Titanic would refuse to fetch a life preserver because that’s not her station, doesn’t get the first goddamn penny.
These are my thoughts exactly, and that’s why I asked the question I asked above.
You’ve never worked the kind of shifts which mean half your coworkers wouldn’t be able to recognize you on a lineup. I have… almost ended up being fired because people confused me with another coworker who’d joined the company at the same time, for the same position, and in another out-of-the-way shift; both of us were female, youngish, similar coloring and build. Thankfully our immediate supervisor went to bat for me and convinced the manager to start asking whether people were talking about “the tall one or the short one”.
Me, I’d try to organize things so that for a few months everybody would be splitting things equally with every coworker. It ends up as “everybody gets $500”, it’s easier than figuring out who has to give to whom, and it sends a clear message of “ok, who came up with this idiotic idea?”
This is me to a T. I have a boorish personality, and I am quite nebbish, but I do my work, usually better than my coworkers. Then, the hot chick comes in, taking off 6 days a week, sitting in bosses office. Everybody loves her.
I think your boss must have read a book, or something. Tell him/her to knock it off and get back to work.
Best wishes,
hh
My first thought is that it sounded like some bizarre game theory/negotiation case for an MBA student.
This sounds unbelievably stupid (The bonus plan)
Everyone seems to have automatically assumed that this is a bad idea, but do you really think this is any worse than your bonus being arbitrarily decided by management?
In most professional services firms (accounting, consulting, etc) project tend to be team based. It’s not just about “doing your work” but doing with other people. Therefore, getting along well with your team tends to be important. This policy just incentivises it.
Really, who wants to work with a borish nebbish anyway?
In your particular case, it sounds like they read a Harvard Business School case study on Nordstroms.
That’s because most non-management employees can’t see beyond their cubicle walls. It’s not just about “doing your work”. It’s about making sure that people are working on the right things to benefit the company. Manangement can’t and shouldn’t babysit every single employee so they come up with “levers”. Incentives and disincentives to encourage or discourage certain behaviors.
The reality is that management is just as stupid, arrogant and lazy as your coworkers. They just have more power.
What if management came down with a new policy: rank your fellow employees out of 100 points. We’ll collect the sheets and tabulate them. Highest point total gets promoted! Lowest point total gets fired! Enjoy!
How well do you think that would work out?
Bullshit. Part of being a manger is knowing what your people are doing and who is or is not doing it.
This plan seems mindbogglingly stupid to me. It’s nothing more than a popularity contest, with points going to the five most popular workers, or to the workers who manage to game the system.