Companies use incentive plans as a way to motivate and compensate employees’ remarkable levels of professional accomplishment. It can also be a used to boost production levels and reward employees for a job well done. The objective of incentives awards is to motivate employee goal-setting, cooperation, and group interaction.
For the most employees will perform according to how they are measured and compensated. When employees work as a team, they should be paid as a team. And if the employees don’t get compensated as a team they probably won’t performed as a team. Business has different incentives awards, these incentives can begin at the beginning of a pay period, quarter or the start of the year. Employees could receive a lump-sum payment ranging from $100.00 to $10,000 or Time-Off Award. According to online source “Compensation alone won’t guarantee high levels of performance; however, reward programs can produce the behaviors most likely to lead to success. Employees living more balanced lives tend to be more productive.” (Caruth & Caruth, 2013)
The Academic Journal, Team Performance Management was written by Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg. In this Journal the authors wrote the article “A Guide to Team Incentive Systems” the article was about the seven major categories of a team incentive plan. The seven categories are: 1) team gainsharing profit-sharing, 2) team goal-based incentive systems. 3) Team discretionary bonus systems, 4) team skill incentive systems. 5) Team member skill incentive systems, 6) team member goal incentive systems, and 7) team member merit incentive systems. Team gainsharing and profit-sharing incentive are an incentive plan that is tied to potential profits from the organizational. Team goal-based incentive is an incentive plan that set goals and when those goals are meeting the employees earn monetary or nonmonetary rewards. These are a few examples of seven major categories of a team incentive plan. (Hoffman & Rogelberg, 1998) Hewitt Packard (HP) did not have any incentive pay plan, so the HR executives of HP created an incentive pay plan. This plan would give top performing teams 10% to 20% of bonus pay for achieving high levels of production. Nearly every team was reaching high levels. HP was giving out more bonuses than expect, which create money issue with the company. Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer stated “As soon as the pay system didn’t work, people began to complain, And the more workers complained, the more managers had to redesign the system. The HP experience shows the more you focus people on monetary incentives, the more you use money as a goal and a driver, the more dysfunction you have,” (GRAY, 2009)
As companies use cash bonus as a type of incentive plan, it may cause resentment toward the employee that received the bonus. One way to eliminate the resentment is placing a stipulation on how many times an employee can receive bonuses. They should be limited per quarter or every other quarter. If it is a group incentive, some coworkers could feel they did all the work while others reaped the benefits. Encourage teamwork amongst the group and allow an open door policy for the team members to vent about the lack of participation from others, offer constructive criticism.

Reference
Caruth, D. L., & Caruth, G. D. (2013, Oct). Team-Based Compensation. The Priest, pp. 43-46.
GRAY, K. (2009, September 21). How NOT to Do Incentive Pay. Retrieved from MONEYWATCH.
Hoffman, J. R., & Rogelberg, S. G. ( 1998). A guide to team incentive. Team Performance Management, pp. 23-32.