Back to the bonuses Improving economy allows companies to reward workers

[jamesinca]

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Back to the bonuses
Improving economy allows companies to reward workers

Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, December 20, 2003


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As a consultant on human capital management, Menlo Park's Valerie Frederickson & Co. tries to practice what it preaches. So it allocates quarterly bonuses to its 12 employees based on a combination of their performance and the firm's profitability.

After a standout 2003, this year's bonuses will total 50 percent of payroll, double last year's. But there are no traditional one-size-fits-all holiday bonuses: no turkey, no Scotch, no mad money.

"If I could dole out year-end bonuses based on how warm and friendly I'm feeling, I would take away people's power to perform and control their own income," said Valerie Frederickson, the company's principal.

She's not alone. Increasingly, companies are doing away with the traditional year-end bonus that was basically a gift awarded to every employee who showed up and warmed a seat. Instead, firms are switching to individual performance bonuses based on measurable goals and tempered by the reality of the bottom line. And with the economy finally thawing after two frigid years, companies have returned to awarding those performance bonuses.
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/20/BUGE73RD531.DTL

These people better cash those checks before the economy crashes again and the checks become rubber. I am under the belief that the companys are showing a profit because they have given so many pink slips, not that the economy is improving.

[Rose Siding]

1. "If I were generous, it would hurt people"

Well, Valerie, that's *exactly* what happened to Bob Cratchet. After Scrooge had his epiphany and lavished bennies on the guy, he lost his drive and grew less self-motivated. He became a totally worthless employee- came in late, was rude to customers and finally was lured away by a ruthless competitor. :eyes:

[54anickel]

2. I really despise this type of "all about me" management. It is so abused

This would work on factory floors building widgets for piecework, assuming there were also quality controls in place. It may also work to foster a healthy competitive mentality in a group of sales persons.

My experiences with this (and it is becoming all to prevalent these days) just does not work, and destroys moral of some and brown-nosing and cheating the books by others.

Whatever happened to the idea of teamwork?

An example of my most recent run in with this type of management.

A department of research and development, responsible for functionality and compatibility testing.

Those with the most experience under their belts got the more difficult assignments, which tend to take a bit more time.

The "brown-nosers" would bang through the testing, passing the components and release them for sale. Many times this quick testing would result in failures in the field of sold products.

The failures would again be assigned to those with the most experience as now there were customers hot for a solution.

At the end of the year, the only metric used to evaluate performance was number of components tested and released. Guess who got the recongnition.

When you promote a team atmosphere, no part is greater than the sum of the whole. The team would quickly root out any deadwood you may have as that deadwood effects their ability to perform.

The type of management promoted in this article simply tends to lead to lying, corruption, back-biting and promoting those who cheat. Now that person will develop an entire department based on deceit. After a while, most of your corporation is run be a culture of "It's all about ME", I got mine, you get yours....before you know it you have another Enron.

[SharonAnn]

7. You're describing some of my experiences also.

It's pretty amazing that management sets up this kind of thing and thinks is "good" for business.

[0007]

3. The trickle down economy is starting to work,

I saw a homeless man sleeping in a new cardboard refrigerator carton.

[MasonJar]

4. The companiess are making money again because

of all the workers who have lost their jobs. This is also one main reason the stock market is doing better. I personally am not into having my stocks rise because of unemployment. This economy means a lot less bonuses (fewer workers).

[loudnclear]

5. Happy for the workers...BUT

this seems to be something that a group of Repug business owners have decided to do to help the public confidence among their workers. They get a big tax break, the workers get money (and I am glad about it) and Bush gets the credit for putting the money in their pockets. I lay you 5 to 10 that there was money enough to do this last year and the year before but how much do you want to be that Rovies lobbied these businesses? And I'm talking about those companies awarding $1000 for every year etc.

OK...I will admit that I am probably wrong on this one...but l'm researching this thoroughly. Yes, I am very cynical suspicious.

[teryang]

6. There is no "follow through"

Any alleged increased in the bottom line has not been passed on to workers. A number of financial experts on conservative business news programs have noted that employment is still lagging and if there isn't employment follow through (with decent paying jobs) on the alleged economic growth the so called recovery will be weak and short lived.

So called performance based compensation is really a way to get more people to work longer for less. Salaried compensation is cut and the carrot of commission or performance based compensation is held out hoping that the employee will be so desparate as to accept the risk forced upon him in lieu of unemployment. I simply refuse to do it.

As the number of American consumers increases, their purchasing power declines as they are gouged by increasing utility rates, energy costs, insurance costs and state and local taxes. Lowered housing costs and transportation costs as a result of lower interest rates are completely absorbed by these robbers. Public works programs are going on continously in my community while the tattered public school systems beg for money and homeowners are going broke.