romote employee respect and professionalism, and promote an internal conflict resolution procedure, are companies that reduce employee stress. A reduction in employee stress reduces employee absenteeism. An incentive provides an employee with a boost to their motivation to avoid unnecessary absenteeism. Some companies allow employees to cash in their unused sick days at the end of a quarter. Others give an employee two hours of bonus pay for every month of perfect attendance or unused sick days. Still others provide employees with a buffet lunch, a certificate of achievement, or even a chance at winning prizes. The type of incentive program your company uses should be created for your company. As I said before, incentives and rewards can be unimportant or punishments to some while they are incentives to work harder and rewards to others. For example, my employees might not care about getting an extra $20 at the end of the month but might respond greatly to getting a weekend off the next month or getting free lunch for perfect attendance. At my current place of business, the only real form of motivation used is money in the form of yearly bonuses. These yearly bonuses are tied to both performance of the individual and the profits of the company. In my opinion, there are more than a few flaws with this motivational philosophy.First, it is the only form of motivation so a tremendous amount of focus is placed on the bonus as a measure of the employee’s accomplishments.Second, by combining the performance of the individual with the performance of the company there is a lot of room for external factors to influence the bonus that are perceived to be out of the employees’ control. As an example, if overall profits are down over the previous year, the bonus is going to be smaller than the previous year no matter what the level of performance by any one individual. An employee can work hard outside of the spotlight of the sales arena...
