A short first-person account by Donna Genie describing an incentive bonus plan observed at a manufacturing plant. The speaker recounts a 10-station production floor with small teams, where overtime pay (time-and-a-half after 8 hours) is deducted from a team bonus pool and team members are required to wait until all teammates finish before leaving—creating resentment when one person’s overtime reduces everyone’s bonus.
I've worked on many incentive plans for payroll and there's always some catches to them. And I found an interesting one recently that I want to share with you. I was recently visiting a manufacturing plant and in this plant they had 10 different stations and each station had about three to five team workers. That team of workers on that station all worked together. So they started out very early in the morning and when they finished their quota of what they had to produce for the day, they were allowed to go home. The worker stays past 8 hours, you're required by law to pay overtime time and a half rate. So what they did was all of the team members on that team had to stay there on that position until all of the team was ready to be released. This company has a bonus incentive plan. At any time they have to pay out overtime wages. Those wages are deducted from the potential bonus that all of the team gets. Although I may have received some overtime pay and while I'm sitting there I've got to wait on my co worker. But in reality, the whole team is mad because they've now lost out on bonus money.
