Table of Contents:-
- Meaning of Incentives
- Prerequisites for an Effective Incentive System
- Scope of Incentives Schemes
- Incentive Schemes in Labor-Intensive Manufacturing
- Types of Incentives
Meaning of Incentives
Employers provide incentives to workers in recognition of their outstanding performance. Employers use payments by results to recognize and compensate top-notch employee performance. Incentives vary for each individual based on their performance, distinguishing them from fixed wages and salaries.
Incentive systems are tools to support individual or group behaviour at work. An effective incentive system encourages employees to be creative and innovative. It promotes a sense of loyalty among competent and productive employees. Incentives can be monetary and non-monetary.
According to Kemmerer and Thiagarajan, “An incentive is something that influences people to act in certain ways. An incentive system is a collection of incentives and a set of procedures for using them. Organisations use incentive systems to motivate their employees”.
According to Burrack and Smith, “An incentive scheme is a plan or programme to motivate individuals for good performance. An incentive is most frequently built on monetary rewards, but may also include a variety of non-monetary rewards or prizes”.
Prerequisites for an Effective Incentive System
Key principles given below guide the development of an incentive scheme to meet organizational goals.
1) Definite and Quantifiable Objectives
Incentive schemès should have specific and quantifiable objectives to facilitate good control and to maintain energy.
2) Reduction in Production Cost
The incentive scheme should lower the production cost.
3) Motivation
It is a natural phenomenon people don’t do anything without a purpose. Therefore, an incentive plan should motivate the employees to perform better.
4) Simple to Administer
The incentive scheme should be simple for management to manage, with low cost and effort.
5) Guarantee of Minimum Wages
When selecting an incentive scheme, it should ensure the minimum wages in case of unavoidable circumstances which are beyond the control of workers.
6) Payment for Increased Production
The incentive scheme should minimise the wastage of raw materials and defective work. On the contrary, goods and increased production deserve recognition and rewards.
7) Easy to Understand
The scheme should be easy for the workers to understand. They should be able to compute their wages on their own.
8) Efficacy
The scheme should establish a connection between effort and efficiency to attain the desired objectives.
9) Compliance with Policy and Labour Law
An incentive plan should be according to the labour laws and should not be against any policy or regulation of the country.
10) Well-Timed Disbursement of Incentives
Workers should receive incentives the moment they complete their tasks. This motivates the employees to seek out and eagerly wait for such challenging tasks.
11) Technical Standards to Attain the Levels of Performance
Developing standards for a good incentive scheme is a fundamental requirement based on scientific principles. This makes the rules to be objective. For other productivity, these standards should be realistic and attainable so that they can inspire workers to enhance.
12) Unrestricted Wages
Incentives should inspire workers to commit considerable effort to boosting production, resulting in increased wages.
13) Reducing Labour Turnover and Absenteeism
The incentive scheme should be lucrative so that workers are regular in their jobs on a long-term basis.
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Scope of Incentives Schemes
The scope of the incentive plan is extensive, with the possibility of limitations in specific industries. They are:
1) Industrial units where the productivity of the individual or group is difficult to measure or is not possible due to technical and psychological situations.
2) Industrial units where quality control is essential or in specific groups of workers where high quality is extremely important.
3) Industrial units where the working conditions are hazardous for the life of an employee and it is hard to keep an eye on the use of safety measures.
Incentive plans readily apply to all industrial units, except the three mentioned categories. For example, textile industries, mining industries, cloth industries, leather and rubber industries, etc. In industries such as construction and chemicals, incentive schemes have proven to be effective.
Incentive Schemes in Labor-Intensive Manufacturing
It is evident from the fact that result-based payment systems are efficiently applied in those organisations where there are managerial experts and technical staff to guarantee efficient production, quality control and work measurement. However, this system gives positive outcomes in small businesses which use remedial support from expert services for designing incentive plans.
Incentive schemes are often considered important and to be widely used in those manufacturing processes which are labour-intensive. However, their implementation in fully automated plants is doubtful. Incentive schemes also have a vital role in machine-based organisations. However, this fact is not justified because an operator can easily destroy a CNC machine and a software programmer can easily place a virus in the computer system, if incentives are not given to him. This is the only reason why machine-based organisations are encouraged to use incentive plans.
It should be a rule in new organisations to avoid the introduction of incentive plans at least for the initial five years for employees. They should be given payment based on time because this initial time is crucial for any organisation to establish itself in the market. When the organization implements these measures, it becomes easier to sell additional units of products. Incentives also affect the output and its quality and in the initial stage, any poor quality of output will hamper the prospects of newly established business.
Types of Incentives
Incentive schemes/plans can be classified into two different types as follows:
1) Monetary Incentives: Monetary incentives are those incentives which are paid in the form of money or kind.
2) Non-Monetary Incentives: Non-monetary incentives are those incentives which are not provided in the form of money or goods These types of incentives do not directly benefit the employee. Despite being non-monetary, these incentives play a role in motivation by stimulating the employees to work hard.
