Topic 6:

Applied Performance
Practices

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Types of Rewards in the Workplace

 Seniority-based
 Job status
 Competencies
 Performance-based

© Corel Corp. With permission.

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Seniority-based Rewards

 Pay based on seniority/tenure in the company


 Advantages
• Guaranteed wages may attract job applicants
• Minimize job insecurity
• Seniority-based rewards reduce turnover
 Disadvantages
• Doesn’t motivate job performance
• poor performers remain in the company
• May act as golden handcuffs (continuance commitment:
tie people to the job)
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Job Status-Based Rewards
 Status/promotion based pay

 Advantages:
• Job evaluation tries to maintain pay equity
• Motivates competition for promotions

 Disadvantages:
• Over-competition may cause conflict and
organizational politics
• Encourages hierarchy and reduces responsiveness
• Reinforces status differences
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Competency/Skill Based Rewards
 Pay increases with competencies/skills
acquired and demonstrated
 Skill-based pay
• Pay increases with skill modules learned

 Advantages
• More flexible work force, better quality,
consistent with employability
 Disadvantages
• Higher training costs

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Performance-Based Rewards

• Profit sharing
Organizational • Stock options
rewards

Team • Team Bonuses

rewards • Gainsharing

• Individual Bonuses
Individual • Individual Commissions
rewards • Piece rate

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Improving Reward Effectiveness
 Link rewards to performance

 Ensure rewards are relevant

(within employee’s control)

 Team rewards for

interdependent jobs

 Ensure rewards are valued

© Corel Corp. With permission.

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Job Design
 Assigning tasks to a job,
including the
interdependency of those
tasks with other jobs

 Organization's goal -- to
create jobs that can be
performed efficiently yet
employees are motivated
and engaged

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Job Specialization

 Dividing work into separate jobs that include

a subset of the tasks required to complete the
product or service
 Scientific management
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
• Advocated job specialization
• Taylor also emphasized person-job matching,
training, goal setting, work incentives

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Evaluating Job Specialization

Advantages Disadvantages
 Less time changing  Job boredom
activities  Discontentment pay
 Lower training costs  Higher costs
 Job mastered quickly  Lower quality
 Better person-job  Lower motivation
matching

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Jobs design practices
that MOTIVATE
employees:
1. Job rotation
2. Job Enlargement
3. Job Enrichment
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1. Job Rotation

 Moving from one job to

another
 Benefits
Job ‘A’
• Minimizes repetitive strain
injury Job ‘B’

• Multiskills the workforce

• Potentially reduces job
boredom
Job ‘D’

Job ‘C’

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2. Job Enlargement
 Adding tasks to an existing job
 Example: video journalist

Traditional news team

Video journalist
Employee 1
Operates camera • Operates camera
• Operates sound
Employee 2 • Reports story
Operates sound

Employee 3
Reports story

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3. Job Enrichment
Given more responsibility for scheduling,
coordinating, and planning one’s own work

1. Clustering tasks into natural groups

• Stitching highly interdependent tasks into one job
• e.g., video journalist, assembling entire product

2. Establishing client relationships

• Directly responsible for specific clients
• Communicate directly with those clients

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Self-Leadership

 The process of influencing oneself to

establish the self-direction and self-
motivation needed to perform a task
 Includes concepts/practices from:
• Goal setting
• Social learning theory

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Elements of Self-Leadership
Constructive Designing Self-
Personal Self-
Thought Natural Reinforce-
Goal Setting Monitoring
Patterns Rewards ment

 Personal goal setting

• Employees set their own goals
• Apply effective goal setting practices

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Elements of Self-Leadership
Constructive Designing Self-
Personal Self-
Thought Natural Reinforce-
Goal Setting Patterns Rewards Monitoring ment

 Positive self-talk
• Talking to ourselves about thoughts/actions
• Potentially increases self-efficacy
 Mental imagery
• Mentally practicing a task
• Visualizing successful task completion

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Elements of Self-Leadership
Constructive Designing Self-
Personal Self-
Thought Natural Reinforce-
Goal Setting Patterns Rewards Monitoring ment

 Finding ways to make the job itself more

motivating
• eg. altering the way the task is accomplished

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Elements of Self-Leadership
Constructive Designing Self-
Personal Self-
Thought Natural Reinforce-
Goal Setting Patterns Rewards Monitoring ment

 Keeping track of your progress toward the self-

set goal
• Looking for naturally-occurring feedback

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Elements of Self-Leadership
Constructive Designing Self-
Personal Self-
Thought Natural Reinforce-
Goal Setting Patterns Rewards Monitoring ment

 “Taking” a reinforcer only after completing a

self-set goal
• eg. Watching a movie after writing two more sections
of a report
• eg. Starting a fun task after completing a task that
you don’t like

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