Prepare to Clean up Bonuses

hand-washing-1

I had the opportunity lately to have conversations with colleagues, friends and various business leaders on the topic of bonuses.  Are they effective, how big can they be, who’s getting them (and by who I’m more speaking to the position with an organization and not a specific individual) and the reasons for being rewarded a bonus.

What I found interesting is that some bonuses are directly tied to the individual and some are directly tied to things, events or otherwise that the individual can’t directly manage or control.  Here’s a few examples;

  • Ensuring that all of your staff properly wash their hands when they’re supposed to
  • Customers stay in the store longer and spend more money
  • Sales personnel contact 20% more people
  • Patients are well enough quicker to be discharged sooner
  • Revenue incrementally increases each month by a minimum of 2.25% no exceptions
  • Significant increase in Facebook® Likes and Twitter® followers
  • Ensure clients respond to project scheduling requests in a timely fashion
  • Complete most of the projects assigned to you

For the record I did not make up anyone of these on this list.  In fact I’ve had a couple of these asked of me in the past.

So I get that bonuses are traditionally passed along when revenue is up and profitability is accompanied along with it and its a share in the wealth scenario.  But what if we’re to not change the system entirely but add emergency management performance indicators to the list.

As with many of the above list, you may not be able to manage or control the outcome of those scenarios and with an actual emergency event predicting its final outcome, well lets just say if you could do that you should be buying a lottery ticket.

But there are things we can include on that list;

  • Fire Safety Plan reviewed annually with executive sign off
  • Monthly Fire Warden training is completed with 100% success/attendance
  • Emergency response plan is reviewed and updated annually
  • Emergency response table top exercises, class room training conducted annually with 100% success/attendance
  • Down time of production/business/process is reduced as a result of effective emergency response due to an emergency, based on historical data of same

The list is not completely inclusive and I’m sure that many more can be added.  It’s not that I disagree with profit sharing, it’s that I disagree with some of the reasons  for it.  Why not tie it back to the fact that people are genuinely going to keep the business/organization going as best as they can in the event of an emergency.

“Thank you for protecting lives, property, assets and our reputation by being forward thinking in your goal to ensure that we’re prepared to respond to emergencies in the best way that we can.”

I think this would be a lot easier than standing outside the bathroom for most of your day making sure people are properly washing their hands, and a lot less creepy.

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