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Ask Slashdot: Best Incentives For IT Workers?
New submitter Guru Jim writes "Our company is currently looking at our incentives program and are wondering what is out there that helps motivate IT workers. We have engineers/sys admins as well as developers. With both teams, we have guns who are great and really engaged in looking after the customers, but some of the team struggle. Sometimes it is easy to say that there isn't too much work on and goof off and read Slashdot all day. This puts more pressure on some of the team. Management is being more proactive in making sure the work is shared equally, but we are wondering what can be out there that is more carrot than stick? We already have cake day, corporate massage day, bonuses for exams and profit share, but what is out there that is innovative and helps build a great workplace?" If you're reading this, the odds are good that you work in or around IT (or hope to); what would you most like to see your workplace implement?
Profit sharing based on a broad range of metrics in the company (profit, efficiency, quality goals, etc) along with quarterly meeting to go over the status of those metrics. This quite litterally ties everyone's efforts together.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
- Administration: 2 hours
- Writing this report: 10 minutes
- Accounting for this report during the day: 10 minutes
- Bathroom and breaks: 40 minutes
- Telling others what I will be doing in the future (because they asked): 4 hours
- Doing work: 1 hour
My typical day. I explained to my manager that's what they'll likely see in the report. They called bullshit. I asked them to watch. They were horrified at the wasted time talking to other teams telling them every day what I was going to do but couldn't get to, and that they didn't just hang up (or leave my cube) and let me work when I told them "I'd have done 1 hour of work if I didn't spend 1 hour on the phone telling you I would do 1 hour of work today".
In the end, I didn't have to write up more reports, and nothing got fixed because those idiots are from other departments and nobody cares. I still spend 4 hours a day telling people what I will do and that I can't do it because I'm telling you I will do it instead of doing the work. If this company weren't imploding *and* the largest tech employer in the city (and I didn't own a house), I'd have already found another job. *sigh*
You want to know why folks work their asses off to create shit for free and goof off at work when they're being paid for it?
1. The free shit they do is shit they find interesting. Whether the programming is interesting or challenging or they are wrting software that solves a problem that means something to them.
2. The work they are doing for your company is either unchallenging, does something meaningless in their opinion, or both.
All the high pay, pizzas, games, massages, or any other motivational tricks you got from a book (or worse from a know-nothing managment consultant) will not work - at least over the long term.
Here's what you do: start hiring entry level people to learn the system. The entry levels will find that work challenging and rewarding for a couple of years. You can pay them shit.
The current crop? Start letting some of them go. The best and brightest have already left.
That's all you can do.
If he really wants to know what incentive structure would be better for his IT staff, he should ask them to design one for him. Give them a budget limitation, as appropriate.
The point of an incentive system is to leverage the maximum amount of work for the minimum investment.
Examples would be: providing $10 worth of pizza to the guys working through lunch in place of paying them an extra $50/hr; awarding a $1,000 bonus to the guys who worked 80 hours last week and would have got an extra $2,000 at their hourly rate or $3,000 if you paid them overtime; giving out a trip to the most productive team to go carting, costing you maybe $500 but getting an average of an extra $300 worth of work out of all four teams competing.
Best case, you ask them to come up with incentives, they'll take it seriously and come up with entirely fair 1:1 compensation for their time. At that point, you may as well have just paid them better in the first place, offered them paid overtime in place of OTE or hired more, as you're not getting any increased profitability from their fair program.
Most likely though, they'll come up with a program that's easy for them to game and get more compensation than the extra effort actually merits. The guys who always come in early anyway will likely set up an early arrivers bonus, those who already hit 40 tickets a day will set a bonus threshold at 40.
If the point of an incentive system is to get extra work for less than, you know, hiring extra people to do that extra work, you are by definition asking for more for less. Asking people to set up the system for tricking extra work out of them? Probably not that successful.
To be fair though, very, very few incentive systems actually work anyway. The smart figure out how to game the system (give a bonus for clearing the most tickets and you suddenly notice some guys only take the quick and easy tickets, refusing to touch the hard ones). The lazy figure they're not going to get the bonus anyway and don't make an effort. Worse, it divides your team as those who aren't getting the incentive complain about how unfair the system is and it drives a wedge between them and those who were smart enough to figure out how to game it. Joel on Software has written a bunch of good articles on this, here's one of them.
If he really wants to know what incentive structure would be better for his IT staff, he should ask them to design one for him.
Actually, have each of them design it. People are individuals and what motivates one does not necessarily motivate another.
Years ago, my boss asked a similar question. I and my team had been working really hard to get a product shipped and he wondered what he could do for all of us. I suggested he do things for each of us.
For example, I like toys. Have the company buy me a nice big display and new computer and I'm happy. One of the other guys really liked time off--wanted to go spend time with his LDR. Another one liked money--a cash bonus to do with as he pleased. So if the boss had bought us all new toys, I'd've been psyched but everyone would have been "meh." Give us all an extra week off? One guy is psyched, everyone else? Meh. Same with the cash.
Ultimately, that's what he did and it worked out well.
You get more with the carrot than with the stick, so unless you're employing a group of starving donkeys I suggest cold, hard cash.
While I agree with this sentiment up to a point, it goes far beyond just cold hard cash. I worked in IT for 15 years until I was black-balled by the Powers That Be for public criticism of the Bush regime post-9/11 (don't ask). Cash may be king, but it hardly begins to cover what makes for a productive, energetic IT work-force. I know, because I have been there. Let me elucidate:
Respect: Respect is a 2-way street. Bosses that treat their employees with a modicum of respect for their prior knowledge and insights to problem resolution will get more effort out of their workers.
Variety: Variety of job assignments, particularly time-sharing between multiple assignments, keep workers alert and fresh.
Mentoring: Provide employees with at least quasi-confidential mentoring by more senior staff. Every job is a learning experience to some extent, and public ridicule for minor gaffes can ruin a career.
Education: Employers that offer discounted or free courseware for continuing education will benefit both the employee and the company long-term. HR should invest the time to help employees keep their CVs up-to-date.
Flex-Time: Unless you are running a Chinese Foxconn facility, flex-time provides for accommodating the individual needs of employees who might actually have a life outside the job.
Vacations: Vacations should begin with a 2 week minimum, and increase with the time vested with the company. Not only does it help employees let off steam and recuperate away from the company, but it will also help the company to discover weaknesses in the overlap in employee skills. It will also serve to remind employees that they are not irreplaceable. No one in a corporation, from janitor to CEO is irreplaceable.
Bonuses/Awards: Bonuses should be generous and tied to specific projects and project milestones. Awards, even tacky awards, that acknowledge the efforts of workers are appreciated.
Profit-sharing: If your company isn't offering profit-sharing awarded quarterly, then you are insulating management rewards from those of your employees, which will create unnecessary divisions in team-based corporate goals.
Activities: Outside activities that bring employees and families of employees together build corporate identity and unity. Even a semi-annual catered barbeque held in the corporate parking lot would do -- reservations at a theme park would be even better.
Benefits: Companies that are not stingy with health, family health, and term life insurance will have happier, healthier employees. Companies that subscribe to quality daycare facilities for the young children of employees demonstrate an interest in the well-being of the employees families, and helps build loyalty.
401Ks: Companies must offer employees a decent selection of retirement investments, preferably with vested corporate contributions. A 401K that only invests in company stock isn't a retirement plan -- it's a scam.
Not every company can offer all of the things that I have listed above, particularly smaller companies. But those that do manage to offer many of these items will have a happy, loyal, and energetic workforce that will willingly go above and beyond to help the company when needed. Merely offering top dollar in wages to employees does not build loyalty, only a mercenary attitude that will hurt the company most when the company is vulnerable.
Anyway, that's my $00.02 worth.