Comments on: No Work No Pay

By: Pieter Willem

Pieter Willem — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:40:59 +0000

The labour law makes provision for paid leave for commision based employees who spend more than 80% of their time in your business. With more than 80% time spent the employee is considered a permanent worker and thus qualifies for leave benefits. Please consult the labour law on this but it states something like an average pay calculated from the last 3 to 6 months paycheques must be given. A way around this is to determine a percentage commission with your employee and to then add say 2% extra to that,stating that the 2% is for payed leave. This has not been tested at the CCMA though…and I am not a labour consultant.

By: Annette

Annette — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:21:32 +0000

I like your articles. They are always very interresting. I only have one problem with this article…. What about paid leave for holidays and vacations? How will this be caculated on the performace based remuniration? Each employee is entitiled to leave a year…Performance bonuses are great idea – but to have a basic salary helps when you want to go on vacation or are you going to say…Sorry boys no more vacations of paid leave…no work, no pay….

By: RudolphS

RudolphS — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:45:36 +0000

The principal is good but if the performance measures are not considered very carefully it can cause a lot of damage. Some departments or functions in a business have conflicting needs and it is very important that the measurements look at the common goals. (E.g. the old fight between maintenance and productions – Maint wants the machines down for a little bit longer to do a proper job to prevent a major failure and production wants it to run the whole time to achieve maximum production. Who is correct?)

Also day to day performance measures can cause you to loose focus on what is important in the long run. Maybe you need to take a decision now that will impact on your day to day performance but will have a long term benefit.

Lastly, target setting is very important. It must be a stretched target but attainable. Making it too easy can basically have the same effect as having no performance based program and making it too stretched can have a negative impact on moral and cause disinterest also leaving you with a time based reward.

By: Janine

Janine — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:18:11 +0000

Your comments are valid and interesting as always. Just a point for you to ponder, there are 2 types of people (broadly speaking) those who run businesses and those who work in businesses. The workers are just workers – they have never had the inclination to run or own businesses – they don’t want to manage people. You can’t force them to have the same passion for your business as you do. Their focus is mostly on things outside of business and they work for a pay check. But more importantly they most probably don’t have the skills or the aptitude to equate their days work into a rand value to the company. As for the people who run the businesses, they are pretty busy as it is – getting them to now start evaluating their staff on a reward system lends itself to micro management and a new tedious and time consuming additional task.

Get dynamic I say, be creative in running your business and work out ways to get the staff that you have to achieve the greatness that they can achieve to the benefit of the company without equating it to a rand value.

Just a thought….

PS – I have just gone from performance based remuneration to a fixed pay check because my company wanted to be able to control what I do and how I do it. I hate it – they love it. I’m looking for a new job as we speak.. ..
Have a great day and thank you for the always interesting articles.
Janine

By: Hennie

Hennie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:45:18 +0000

As you said, it cannot be applied to all functions, some you just need like a receptionist. But even for them you will get what you measure and pay. If you reward rudeness you will get it. Performance remuneration should definitely be part of the pay structures. Although I think the underlying problem for non performance is the inability of companies to write real job descriptions that are based on outcomes that can be measured and rewarded, rather than performance based remuneration. You are right the philosophies run to deep to debate here. Some companies we work for have lost 40% of their turnover last year, at that point you could have had any system in place, you are in trouble and the lay-offs will come, even some of your better people.

I just like the extremes, it always show the flaws and the opportunities.

Hoop dit gaan nog goed
Hennie Visagie