Sometimes managers need to decide what kind of remuneration they have to use in order to motivate their subordinates to work harder, smarter or faster. As in my case I'm willing to work faster or harder if I know there is something I can gain with my behaviour and these thoughts almost everyone has. As their decision should be wise and fact based they need to know how the incentives they will use influence the motivation of the employees and when to use them. Mangers can decide whether to use individual or group incentives. If the individual incentive plans can't be implemented the group incentive plans take their place and vice versa. In this paper I would like to focus on group incentives and try to explain how the group incentives can influence employee motivation and I hope I would come to some conclusion in the end.
What are the group incentives?
At first we have to define what the group incentives are to better understand their influence on motivation. Group incentives are incentives paid to group of employees. But now there can arise a question why should be groups and not individuals rewarded. There can be more than one answer but all of them are really easy to get. The basic idea is that not all the employees can be remunerated following the individual incentive plans. If this situation occurs group incentives plans are implemented instead. Group incentives are used when it is difficult to measure each individual employee output, and/or when team work is important. Nevertheless sometimes output is measurable but impractical or too costly to measure. Simply the performance of unit consisting of more employees or the whole company matters and is the reason of pay increase or bonuses. Nowadays there are many group plans used in the real practise but generally their basements are almost the same in all types of these plans. Most of the group plans are based on a monetary performance standard, such as the sharing of profits, the
Bibliography: Balkin, D., & Gomez-Meija, L. (1987). New Perspectives on Compensation. N. J.: Prentice-Hall, pp. 211-229. Graham-Moore, B., & Ross, T. (1990). Gainsharing. Washington, D. C.: BNA Books. Lawler, E. (1981). Pay and organizational development. Addison-Wesley, pp. 18-25, 133-156. Milkovich, G., & Boudreau, J. (1991). Human Resource Management (6th ed.). Boston: Irwin, pp. 503-507. Milkovich, G., & Newman, J. (1996). Compensation (5th ed.). Boston: Irwin, pp. 299-350. Rudy, J. (1991). Introduction to Management. Bratislava: FMUK, pp. 118-127. Yoder, D., & Henemann Jr., H. (Eds.). (1975). Motivation and Commitment. Washington, D. C.: BNA Books. pp. 6-60 – 6-73.