Moving Toward a Pay-For-Performance Culture
Have you ever had a job where you see someone rise to the top meteorically and wonder what they are doing to get there? Have you had to watch someone kiss so much you-know-what that they got all the opportunities in the world from their manager? If you feel like a victim for having to witness this, don’t. Sadly this happens all around us every day and you are among many who have to endure this kind of unfair distribution of attention, money and personal growth. Unfortunately there is no way to entirely eliminate this type of bias, but on a positive note it can certainly be minimized.
Creating a pay-for-performance culture isn’t necessarily going to rid your organization of those employees whose lips are firmly planted on the boss’s back end, but it will help “regulate” their raises and promotions. If very specific goals and standards of performance that are measurable are established for all employees and specific parameters for merit increases and promotions based on an employee’s ratings on their performance reviews are established, then it becomes somewhat more difficult for the loose and highly subjective approach to wage increases and promotions to survive.
If you are going to implement a pay-for-performance culture, it becomes important to, at a minimum, implement requirements for journaling performance “events” and tracking goals on an ongoing basis. And conducting 360 degree feedback surveys to gather feedback from multiple raters within and potentially outside the organization will allow for a more objective look at an individual’s performance and behavior over some defined period of time.
Moving in this direction will help strengthen and justify decisions about merit increases or promotions. Putting more “teeth” into the ongoing employee evaluation and measurement process will help remove much of the subjectivity involved when a manager is easily swayed by an employee who knows how to play the game.