Sales Compensation Blog

I was in Alaska last week for a ski vacation. Alaska is known as "The Last Frontier." I think this might be the case for compensation practices too. I have friends there who are sales people, and of course earn commissions, but for the most part occupations are centered on Alaska's land and natural resources, be it working for oil companies, in fishing operations, the service industry, or those who are living completely off the grid. Perhaps there are certain sectors of the economy where incentive compensation just doesn't make sense and may never be used, although, I might suggest that incentives could have a role and it might make a big difference.

 

Here is the short list of jobs where people aren't currently with incentives:

• Government employees
• Service workers
• Accountants
• Health care workers
• Teacher (this actually varies district by district, some pay for student performance)

Then there are the jobs that get incentive payments even though they aren't exactly called that:

• Lawyers
• Restaurant Workers

And then there are groups where I think that they should be paid with a certain level of incentive in order to increase productivity or satisfaction:

• Government employees- imagine if the person paving the street in front of your house got a bonus for getting it done quickly? Or the person at the DMV window got paid a bonus based on the number of people they help in a day or their ratings in satisfaction surveys?
• Service workers- This is along the lines of restaurant workers, if people are happy with their service they tip and that is a form of incentive.

What do you think? Could there be a way to incent people to work harder especially after years of not being incented to work any harder than they do? Would it motivate, or produce the results we hope for?