With the competitive landscape becoming increasingly difficult, companies are looking for ways to optimize employee effort and performance. One mechanism used by many companies is pay-for-performance, linking compensation directly to performance. A Norwegian study investigated the role of base pay and variable pay-for-performance plans in the Insurance industry over a 2-year period, and found that such compensation plans can lead to increased effort and deceased turnover intentions, but via employee job motivation.
Key Topics: Pay-for-performance; Employee motivation; Employee effort; Turnover intention 
With employee health problems and associated employer costs on the rise, many companies are looking for novel ways to improve employee wellness. A study at Cornell University examined the effect of tying 10% of manager compensation to employee wellness and found that managers were more likely to promote employee wellness when incentivized to do so, and managers also expressed a preference to work for companies with such incentives in place.
Key Topics: Workplace wellness; Employee health; Performance evaluations; Management compensation 
In many sectors, particularly those with primarily low-skilled jobs, the use of temporary and often migrant workers is on the rise. While there are certain benefits to companies in using temporary migrant workers, their use may come at a cost. A study of the UK food manufacturing sector examined employee absence rates and the tools companies use to reduce absence issues. The results showed that companies were predominantly using punishment rather than reward techniques to combat absence. This study also found that settled migrant workers had similar absence behaviour to native workers, while newer transitory type migrant workers had less job commitment and were more likely to be absent from work.
Key Topics: Absence management; Temporary workers; Migration 
The role of long term incentives, particularly equity holdings, in the decision making of CEOs has long been an area of interest for researchers and practitioners alike, given the potential significance of this relationship in company performance. A recent study of CEOs of US companies examined how a CEOs stock option holdings can affect their preference for short- or long-term strategic projects. The study found that when CEOs have accumulated stock option wealth, their likelihood of investing in the long-term increases, however when they have a large amount of recently granted options CEOs are more likely to prefer short-term projects.
Key Topics: Executive compensation; Stock options; Long term incentives; CEO decision making; Temporal orientation 
The effect of variable compensation on job performance has been well established, although the examination of incentive plans relating to performance against budget targets has received limited attention. A study of the Australian manufacturing sector examined the role of organizational commitment and trust-in-supervisor in the relationship between budget-based incentive compensation schemes and employee job performance and found that such schemes can lead to greater trust-in-supervisor, which in turn leads to greater subordinate job performance and organizational commitment.
Key Topics: Variable compensation plans; Trust-in-supervisor; Organizational commitment; Job performance 
The role of management bonuses in employee behavior is a little researched area but one that is potentially of great significance for companies. A study in Canada looked at the impact of management pay for performance bonus eligibility on the turnover levels of non-management employees. The results indicate that management bonus eligibility is indeed related to greater levels of voluntary non-management employee turnover, but is not related to greater involuntary turnover.
Key Topics: Pay for performance; Bonus eligibility; Employee turnover |
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