Pay for Performance through Strategic Planning
Introduction
Because studies have shown time and again that pay represents one of the most important factors involved in retaining qualified employees, it is little wonder that there has been a great deal of attention focused on how best to compensate employees for their performance in recent years. Moreover, because employee performance and productivity is inextricably related to organizational profitability, these issues have assumed new relevance and importance in the current economic environment. There have been some mixed reviews concerning pay-for-performance approaches to enhancing employee performance, though, that suggest there is more involved than simply throwing money at top performers. Despite these constraints, many authorities suggest that pay-for-performance programs have a lot to offer organizations seeking to identify better ways to improve employee performance. In this regard, Miller, Hildreth and Rabin (2012) note that, “Individual incentives have a central role to play in the success of most conceptual schemes related to performance. Such plans, while very difficult, have large possibilities; seemingly insurmountable obstacles can be overcome if the emphasis moves to the employee's relative needs for power, affiliation, and achievement” (p. 230). These are tall orders for any human resource manager and an organization’s leadership, though, and the fact remains that measuring individual performance is a complicated affair in many types of organizational settings, particularly the nation’s schools where the controversy over pay-for-performance has been especially pronounced. When the need to take into account individual employee’s relative needs for “power, affiliation, and achievement” and thrown into the mix, it is not surprising that pay-for-performance programs are considered difficult to