Merit-Based Pay Essay

640 Words2 Pages

The piece-rate pay method compensates employees a set amount for each unit of work completed. This payment method is beneficial for both employees and the company. If the employee increases her work speed, she can complete more units of work in an hour. She could potentially make more per hour than she would with a standard hourly rate which would help to increase productivity. The piece rate pay method is cost effective, since the company is only paying for work completed. A slow employee may not be able to complete many work units per hour so if use a standard hourly wage, he gets paid the same, even if he only completes a fraction of the work completed by another employee. The company may end up paying him less per hour with the piece rate …show more content…

The goal is to develop a merit salary increase budget and distribute these budgeted funds equitably among employees based on a management conducted performance appraisal. The human resource department has supported the idea and provided some guidelines to increase the performance measures. This tactic allows an employer to differentiate between the performance of the company as a whole and the performance of an individual. While many merit pay programs also provide an overall reward that is distributed to all employees, to promote such values as team work, a portion of the available compensation is reserved for strong performers. Merit pay also provides a vehicle for an employer to recognize individual performance on a one time basis. The problem with merit pay systems is often a result of flaws in the company design and/or administration. Annual performance evaluations and pay adjustments take a long time makes it difficult for employees to connect the pay change with behavior that may have occurred many months ago. In order to motivate performance at a higher level, the difference between the pay increase for employees whose performance is average and employees whose performance is exemplary is just not

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