THE EFFECT OF NON-MONETARY INCENTIVES ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE ( A CASE STUDY OF HEALTH GATE FOODS AND DRINKS CO. LTD UYO)
The Concept of Financial and Non Financial Incentives
Financial incentives are monetary rewards or compensation use in motivating employees in organization. Financial incentives consist in organization. Financial incentives consist of direct financial and indirect financial compensation. Direct financial compensation consist of salary, wages, bonuses and commissions. The indirect financial compensation are also called benefits, which are all financial compensations. The non financial compensations consist of employee satisfaction, such as responsibility, opportunities for recognition, the chance of promotion, or form psychological and physical environment in which the employee works, such as a pleasant work environment, sound policies, a cafeteria, work sharing compressed work week and free time (Monday and Noe, 2003).
Micheal and Harold (2006) states that financial incentives refers to monetary terms in from of wages and salary use to compensate and motivate workers in an organization. Wages are financial rewards based on time units. The wage rate is multiplied by the number of the units worked. Time unit plans are used when work schedule is irregular e.g factory workers, mine workers, farm labourer etc. while salaries on the other hand are paid from one data to another irrespectively of the amount of time another irrespectively of the amount of time they work between those dates. Salaries are used when the hours of work are so regular that there is little reason to count e.g management salaries, professional salaries etc. And commissions are financial rewards based on direct measure of productivity.
However, Dessler (2005) opined that non financial incentives are remuneration or benefits in from of services. This include medical services, insurance programmes, recreational facilities, subsidized cafeteria, discount on purchase of company’s product, education assistance to staff children and special awards for long services. Non financial incentives in form of fringe benefits are many and varied, however may be classified into four main types of incentives. Individual schemes, groups incentive schemes, factory wide productivity bargaining where workers are allowed to form committee (Aliyu, 2007).
In the same vein Lawal (2006) opined that financial and non financial incentives are means of eliciting additional effort of the workers and are tied to performance. He further opined that there are four main types of incentives plans:
- Indivdiual schemes which include measured day work, piece rates, commission and suggestion schemes
- Groups incentive schemes-similar to the individual ones but places emphasis on group cooperation.
- Factory wide productivity bargaining is an incentive scheme were workers are allowed to form committees. These committees provide suggestions about methods, machines, plant layout material etc.
- Profit sharing schemes make allowance for employees to share in the company’s profit depending on the state of the company’s profit for the year.
Financial incentives are monetary incentives such as salaries, wages, commission, profit sharing and bonuses while non financial incentives are compensation in the form of services offered to employees to enhance their performance services such insurance, health care, paid time not worked etc.
Concept of Employee Performance
The performance of employee is the achieved results of operations with the capabilities of the employee who acts in certain situations. According to Byars (2005) employee performance is a combined result of effort, ability and perception of tasks. High performance is a step towards the achievement of organizational goals. Therefore, efforts are needed to improve employee performance. Dharma (1991) stated that performance is something that is done on the products/services produced or provided by any persons or group of people.
However, Swato (2006) argued that employee performance is the action or the execution of tasks that were completed by individuals within a certain time.
Similarly, Colquitt et al (2011) noted that job performance is the set of employee behaviors that contribute to organizational goal accomplishment.
In the same vein, Okoh(2011) opined that employee performance is the individual effort of an employee in his given tasks in a production process. This implies that each individual is given a task in the production process of every organization as such the rate of work an individual undertakes in a particular production is said to be his performance towards that production, while the overall effort of the employee is said to be organizational performance.
Concept of Performance Incentives in Workplace
The use of performance incentives date back to era of scientific management movement, which was championed by Frederick Taylor in the early 20th century to resolve the problem of soldering at work. Since then, the private sector in most countries has continued to employ performance incentives with a view to raising the productivity of their workers 9Okoh, 2004).
While research on the impact of incentives on employees’ productivity has been a prominent area of interest in human resource management; it has been established by pest surveys that effective incentive pay system are panacea for performance. This is owing to the fact that incentives are regarded as variable payments made to employees or a group of employees on the basis of the amount of output or result achieved. Alternatively, it could be payments made with the aim of pursuing employees’ performance toward higher targets (Banjoko, 2006).
Similarly, Egbe (2009) sees performance incentives as compensation other than basic wages or salaries that fluctuates according to employees’ attainment of some standard, such as pre-established formula, individual or group goals, or organizational earning. Incentives in work place are designed to boost the effort of employees to work extra hard in order to enhance organizational productivity.