Reward

Mullins (2010) alludes that rewards are given to employees as a result of personal achievements, efforts or for positive actions within their organisation. These rewards are primarily a motivation tool in recognition of employees, in order to encourage them to maintain the same level of standards and behaviour, and perform job role tasks to the best of their abilities.

During my work placement in the advertising sales department for a local newspaper, there were many different forms of rewards given to employees. On top of salary, the main incentive given as a reward, within my department, was for making a sale, and in the form of a confectionary gift, such as a box of chocolates. This was given to employees every time they made a successful sale, as a form of novelty reward, and motivated employees to increase effort so as to make more sales and thus receive more gifts. Such a scheme ensured fairness and equity in the sense that employees were rewarded on output, as the more sales that were made, the more the reward received.

However, this scheme was not reflective of effort, as someone who could have been working hard to make sales all day, but closing none, would have received no reward compared to someone who did half an hour’s worth of telephone calls, and made three sales. However, it could be argued that rewards should be based on output rather than effort, as a hard-worker who doesn’t manage to bring in sales would not be profitable for the company.

In turn, the company also had commission-based pay in place on top of basic salaries. However, this was only in place for employees that had been at the organisation for a specific amount of time. Primarily, although employees who had only been at the company for a short while were not able to receive the bonus, it could be argued that this was a motivator for employees to stay at the organisation for longer, in order to receive monetary rewards. More so, the reward system did ensure fairness and equity, due to the fact that the reward was able to be obtained by anyone, should they have been employed long enough,

Conversely, the idea of performance-related pay could also be applied to the question of Chief Executives should still receive large bonuses if the organisation they have led has underperformed. Primarily, it would be argued that the bonus awarded should be directly proportional to the amount of profit or success the company received. Therefore, should the organisation not be performing, this should be reflected in the head of the company’s pay. In turn, it is likely that if the company is underperforming, employees lower down the hierarchical chain will not be receiving such proportions of bonuses for their job and, as such, the level of the chief executive’s bonus pay should be proportionately in line with those of the rest of the company.

 However, it could be said that the level of responsibility and liability attached to the job, especially in the case of the company underperforming, means that Chief Executives are under a level of pressure which warrants such large bonuses, as, in addition to their large workload, the blame if the company does not do well lies foremost with them. Thus it could be argued that the level of time and effort they invest into the company means that they are deserving of such large bonuses. In turn, with the level of effort and time that is required to run the business, reducing the amount of pay received by the Chief Executive may make them less motivated and inclined to perform to the best of their abilities, meaning that the organisation would not be operating as effectively as it could be and would further suffer.

Conclusively, it has been shown that rewards are used to recognise the achievements and efforts of employees, and to motivate them to perform to the best of their abilities. As such, rewards given should be tailored to ensure that receivers display this level of motivation within their job roles.

References

Mullins, L J. (2010) Management and Organisational Behaviour. 9th ed. Essex: Pearson

Bibliography

Beardwell, I; Holden, L; Claydon, T. (2004). Human Resource Management. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.