Imperial Institute of Higher Education
Associated with the
University of Wales-
Master of Business Administration
June 2015 – October 2015
PPMG 100 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Individual Assignment 2

Lecturer : Sanjeeva Perera

Due date : 29th September 2015

Marks Allocated : 20%

Case Study: Rewarding Teamwork in the Plains

(Attached Behlen Company-history book)

In the past, most rewarding systems have been geared to the individual employee. However, with the emergence of teams in most of today’s organizations, systems are being revamped to reward teamwork. A good example is Behlen Manufacturing Company in Columbus, Nebraska.

The 1,100 mostly production employees are organized into 32 teams. Some of these teams have only a handful of members, whereas others have as many as 60. Although each individual receives a base-pay component, which comes to about $8 an hour, the rest of the compensation is variable and is determined in a number of different ways, including how one’s team is performing.

The centerpiece of the manufacturing company’s variable–reward plan is gain sharing, an increasingly popular form of compensation whereby all members share a usually fixed percentage of the documented saving or performance gain accomplished by the team. Behlen employees can earn monthly gain sharing of up to $1 an hour when their teams meet productivity goals. The CEO explained this team reward system as follows: “If you’re in a group that makes stock tanks, for example, from the start of the process to the end of the process, over all shifts, all month long, if the team achieves certain levels of productivity, each of its members is rewarded anywhere from 0 cents to $ 1 an hour for every hour worked in that area. ”Documentation of the gains is based on actual pounds of products, so that everyone on the team knows exactly how well their team