Topic > The Problem of Reward Structures That Discourage Collaboration

One of the classic workforce management articles is titled “On the Folly of Rewarding A while Hoping for B.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The author provides numerous examples that illustrate how leaders often communicate one thing to employees while rewarding completely different behaviors. This article was published nearly 40 years ago, but its message is just as relevant today. Negative business behaviors associated with interdepartmental conflict, administrative bureaucracy and short-term thinking can be traced directly to the financial structures used to reward employees. I doubt that finance departments intentionally create reward structures to encourage corporate silos and inefficient administrative bureaucracies. But such outcomes are often the result of building reward structures without fully thinking about how they will play out further down the organization. We consider the following two relatively common types of suboptimal financial reward structures: Rewarding internal compliance over customer support. Monetary reward structures are regularly designed by means of people who no longer paint virtually with customers to generate revenue for the organization. As a result, reward structures often overemphasize consequences important to internal support capabilities and underemphasize customer service outcomes. For example, a large healthcare organization has currently implemented a document gadget that has made the method of coverage requests much less complicated for the internal accounting department. But it has also significantly extended the time doctors have to spend on data entry. When the system launched, doctors were told their bonuses were trusted to enter data into the device in less than 24 hours. This requirement has led doctors to see fewer patients each day to ensure they have time to complete data access. The form of praise has become more about increasing compliance with internal procedures than encouraging doctors to deliver better, first-class care to patients. I strongly suspect that the finance people who created this reward system spend far more time with the accounting employees who settle claims than with the doctors who actually generate the company's sales. Reward price savings over sales technology. Many monetary reward systems are set up at the business unit level and then cascaded into targeted silos. For example, an administrative leadership department may obtain a fixed number of monetary objectives were focused on reducing labor costs while the revenue branch acquired objectives related to final new business. These goals are then cascaded within each branch such that administrative guide employees, male or female, are fully rewarded for lowering rates, while character sales people are fully rewarded for the latest new business. Yet these employees are expected to collaborate within the topic. I have seen many examples of seriously adverse administrative support functions placing income pressures on overall performance due to overly restrictive tour and cost rules. And I have seen many examples of wildly excessive prices being racked up by people of income as part of "final offers". Instead of encouraging collaboration between.