Sin of Commission

I agree with everything that this article states, that poorly constructed incentive plans can seriously hurt the performance of your company. George Zimmer's comment on "you want incentives to be just large enough but not too large. . ." is a perfect statement. It also needs to help drive the corporate culture and system of the company. The area's I look at when implementing an incentive plan is customer service, keeping the business looking clean and in good condition, sales, expenses, and employee turnover.

What I have stopped agreeing with, that this article states, is that financial incentives are very low on the reason people work where they work. Over the past two months, we have spoke about financial incentives as being a weak reason people work where they work. First, no its not. It’s the top reason people do the work they do, with very few exceptions. There is the story of this person or that person deciding that they want to devote they lives to helping others, and are going to live meakly forever. I would say most of these people have sometime of emotional break that drives them to make this life altering commitment to poverty. The other 99.9% of people work everyday where they do because of the money. They might of decided along time ago that they wanted to be a doctor, an engineer, an artist, social worker, etc. . . but they are where they are because based on the financial compensation they receive, there is no better place for them to work with their given / current professional qualifications. We all try to convince ourselves that we aren't just in it for the money, but in reality, if we weren't working for the money, and really didn't need the money, we would workless, and most likely, if we didn't need to work, we would be sitting on a beach somewhere, swinging a golf club, or floating on a boat having the time of our lives. We might work once in awhile because it makes us feel good about ourselves, but really, people want money so they can buy things that make them feel good about themselves.