One of the most intriguing ways for an organization to gain a competitive advantage in the area of selecting and retaining employees is by offering a generous employee incentive plan. There are many different incentive plans that a company can implement to motivate employees to perform above expectation and grow the business. However, for a company to accomplish this goal means to match of an incentive plan according to the work- level of the employee or it may not be effective at all at encouraging positive work performance.
Project bonuses are one of the most common incentive plans for employees whom are at the bottom-level of an organization such as staff and supervisors. This type of incentive plan allows for an employee to receive a bonus for achieving certain performance goals. For example, a retail manager would receive a monetary bonus for exceeding the company’s sales goals for the period; however, if the goal is not achievable, this could lead to poor morale which results to under-performance down the road. Another incentive plan used by organizations is profit sharing which is a plan usually implemented for mid-level employees such as middle management or corporate level employees such as an HR manger in my final project. This plan allows employees to receive larger monetary bonuses based on how much the company profits. However, profit sharing plans has no discretion as to who receives a bonus, meaning low performing employees are also entitled to the same amount as an employee who went over and beyond with his or her performance. Another incentive plan is a stock option which is usually offered to upper-level employees such as executives. This is a plan that allows an employee to invest in the company’s stocks usually after he or she has spent some time with the company. This is a huge benefit to an employee that has loyalty with a company but may not be fair to individuals that have the same amount of passion and dedication.