People try lots of ways to get other people to work harder: bonuses, performance-related pay, incentive schemes, targets, QOF, profit shares, fee for service, commission, piece work, payment by results, stock options . . . all are carrots to extract more work from staff. But how effective are they?
The evidence is, not very. As I found out for myself.
Twenty years ago I was a partner in a practice which had a staff bonus system. I was commissioned to write an article for a general practice magazine. They expected me to say how motivating it was for staff to share in the practice’s profits. I described how we were abandoning it because it had proved so demotivating.
