Rewards Essay -- essays research papers

Rewards and Motivation U.S. companies face greater pressures today than ever before to improve cost efficiency and in the same breathe taking their products to market faster, cheaper and with stronger innovation, regulatory compliance, responding to ever increasing regulations around the world that often conflict with each other. A company must also be nimble enough to change direction quickly and cost-effectively when market conditions shift. At the same time, they still must provide an environment in which people want to be employed and want to excel. This is where old models for rewards management fall flat and new rewards approaches must be implemented to make a more efficient and productive organization. (Chang) The company that will be referred to throughout this paper is the author’s current employer, Walgreens Corporation. In today's business environment, attracting, retaining and motivating the kind of people who can sustain a fast-growing organization requires most companies to think diffe rently about how they pay their employees and this is true for Walgreens. The thought process to reflect this change is concerns the shift from compensation to rewards or the merger of both. When speaking to an HR representative within the department, it was made clear that the company objectives are results-focused and the weight of reward programs have increased to compensate. Walgreens views base pay as the price pay for membership to the company. Base pay ensures the company that the employee will show up at work, that they may call employee’s night or weekends with business questions, that they can send them employees out of town and disrupt their personal life. But incentive pay or rewards is the price you pay to get employees focused on what is important to the company. For example, several years ago on the store operations level a flat rate was provided for the positions of Executive managers and storeowners across the board in the relation to annual bonuses allocated. For examples, two hundred dollars and seven hundred dollars respectively were issued on a monthly basis for these positions. However, rather than help productivity it had little effect and essentially did nothing to improve the bottom line for the corporation because managers felt that this allocated amount was just another structured payment (like base pay) and put the... ...n the company across the board but especially in cities in which new districts are being built up, such as North Carolina, South California and Atlanta, Georgia. Human Resources created a rewards program to create the motivation to make the connection between the goal and the effort it takes to obtain that goal. For each referral that leads to a new hire an employee receives one thousand dollars and if they recruit for newly developed cities they obtain double points, which would double the payout (i.e. $1,000 to $2,000). This approach has helped alleviate the recruiting strain that was place on the company. The general process theory is consistent with the Walgreens Corporation that has esteemed itself at leading the curve in regards to innovation and human capital. References Meyer, John P., Becker, Thomas E., Vandenberghe, Christian. Employee Commitment and Motivation: A Conceptual Analysis and Integrative Model. Journal of Applied Psychology; Dec2004, Vol. 89 Issue 6, p991, 17p Chang, Julia. Where Everyone's a Winner. Sales & Marketing Management; Jan2005, Vol. 157 Issue 1, p43, 4p, 8c Milkovich-Newman. Compensation: Pay Model. McGraw-Hill. Boston, 2004.