Lack of Incentive
from "Personnel Management—Principles, practices and point of view," by Scott and Clothier, 1926
Today we share with you yet another powerful insight from one of the best books on Human Resources management ever written. It is another insight that has earned our DUET™ 1 tag. “Lack of Incentive,” a section from Personnel Management—Principles, practices and point of view, is presented below in its entirety for paid subscribers, and in truncated format for those who subscribe to the free edition of The Good Boss Club on Substack.
While always timely because it is a DUET, this passage should be of special interest to today’s HR practitioners and other people managers who are struggling through “The Great Resignation” of the COVID pandemic era.
“Lack of Incentive” is a timeless and universally true description of that “…one specific incentive which is fundamental and far-reaching and which is intimately related with the concept of the Capacities, Interests, and Opportunities of the worker-in-his-work.” As always, we value your comments.
Lack of Incentive
“The effectiveness of the worker-in-his-work is affected, as we know, by the degree to which the factor of Interest exists in it. In turn, Interest, the composite of all those influences which motivate the worker, is stimulated by incentives of various kinds. It is to incentive we wish now to direct your thought.
“There are many different kinds of incentive. Instinctively we think of some method of compensating increased output by increase in pay, some monetary reward immediately tied in with the performance of the work. Piece-work, task and bonus, and so forth, are instances of these kinds of incentives, and when properly applied, they are valuable agencies in stimulating and promoting individual production. Methods of this kind, it is true, have their backwashes. Failure to win the reward sometimes causes resentment and dissatisfaction. But when a plan of tying-in compensation with performance is simple (so that it can be readily understood), practicable (so that the reward is well within reach), and fair (so that an equitable proportion of the saving goes to the worker), the results are usually good.
“There are other incentives, of a non-financial nature, which also exert a profound influence upon the interests and consequently upon the effectiveness of the workers-in-their-work. We have already spoken of the effect of promotional policies upon employees: of the ways and means we shall treat later. But there is one specific incentive which is fundamental and far-reaching and which is intimately related with the concept of the Capacities, Interests, and Opportunities of the worker-in-his-work.