Blog 14- Reward

Reward systems represent an exchange employees undertake as they work in exchange for pay and other rewards from their employers. Mullins (2010) suggest that the term reward refers to psychological payments, these are not written down put portray a degree of trust as well as both monetary and non monetary rewards that an organisation provides them.

Wallis uses a variety of reward techniques which in turn help to motivate its staff. Financial rewards such as incentives are used on a regular basis as it encourages staff to improve the store’s performance. These incentives range from £35 worth of Wallis clothes to a free piece of Jewellery or accessory from the store. Wallis also has a ‘shine’ training scheme and when an employee completes a shine level, which took approximately 3-6 months; a bonus of £75 and a pay rise. Each store is provided with a number of role model tokens which are worth £25 each. Throughout the year management would reward employees who they felt had been a particularly good role model and provided a good image of the company. The final type of financial reward that Wallis offered was that they would pay time and a half on a Sunday.

Wallis also had lots of different non financial rewards in place to ensure that staff are recognised for their commitment to the company. The one factor that I would say Wallis excel at is the opportunity for staff to develop their skills. As each level of the ‘shine’ training scheme, mentioned previously, is completed employees are provided with more responsibility which further helps to develop there skills. Wallis is also very keen on retaining their shop assistants to help them progress up the career ladder to a managerial level rather than employing new members of staff at a managerial level that don’t have knowledge of the company.

As there is a combination of part time and full time members of staff at Wallis the rewards differ for each group to ensure that it is fair for everyone. Each member of staff is contracted to a different number of hours so the competitions are calculated using each employees hours so for example the winner of a completion to collect the most number of email addresses was calculated by the dividing the number of email addressees collected by each employee by the number of hours they work. The prize for this type of competition is the same for each employee regardless of the number of hours you work. The only time when this differs is if it is a national competition where the store is working together to compete against other stores. In these circumstances the winning stores management receives a slightly larger reward then other members of staff.

Considering the state of the economy chief executives still receive large bonuses regardless as to whether or not the company performs well and meets their targets. There are many arguments that support both for and against this statement. Firstly some people believe that as Chief Executives are at the top of their organisation they must have had to work hard to get there as it requires specific skills and qualifications. They feel that this in itself means that Chief Executives deserve to receive large bonuses regardless of the company’s performance. It has also been suggested that Chief Executives are under a huge among of pressure with a lot of responsibilities so the reason that the company didn’t perform very well may not have been their fault. The final argument for this statement is that providing Chief Executives with a bonus could be seen as positive as it would provide them with the motivation and drive to ensure that the company is profitable next year. However there are also a few arguments against them receiving these large bonuses. Firstly, a bonus is rewarded when an individual is doing well so they shouldn’t receive this when the organisation underperformed. Also if the decision the chief executive made was wrong then it is their fault, this seems unreasonable for them to be rewarded for their mistakes. Finally by not giving Chief Executives of organisations that have underperformed bonuses then it will make them change and work harder next year to ensure their organisation performs so that they receive next years bonus.

To conclude, reward systems consist of both financial and non financial rewards which are used to recognise when an employee is doing well. This is used as a motivating tool which in turn increases an employee’s commitment and level of performance to the company.

References

Mullins, L. (2010) Management and organisational behaviour.9^th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.