Ineffective incentive

Today we have our department quarterly update.  The director flew in town to give us overview of how the department is doing.  My project is the only project in the department, so it has very high profile and no room to fail.  Thanks to the stupid decision of close down two design centers in Canada, lay off many experienced engineers and outsource the work to India, the project is quite behind schedule.  Now the management finally wake up and realize the problem, they are all scrambling and try all means to pull the schedule in.  They try to add more resource in India, but they simply could not find any qualified engineer.

They try to hire back ex-employees from the closed design center as contractors.  It is pretty much admitting last year’s decision to close down the site is stupid.  One desperate measure to they try is by making us work hard and longer hours.  This idea won’t work if they use the stick because it would only demotivate us and further lower our productivity.  They try to use carots and lure us to work overtime.  The director said if the project is finish on time, the whole team will have a special bonus as incentive.

This idea sounds great, the only question is how much is the bonus.  The director did not give us any number or percentage, so the incentive won’t work.  No one would work harder if they don’t know roughtly how much we will get in return.  After the meeting, some of us did a rought calculation, we all agree that the bonus has to be at least $10k to be attractive.  Judging from previous record of the company, the so call special incentive bonus could be merely a few thousand dollars, which won’t worth working your ass off.

2 thoughts on “Ineffective incentive”

  1. Yo! Don’t overwork yourself…
    Afterall, health is the most important factor!

    You start to throw tantrums more after long hours of work…
    By the way, you also have less patience with wedding planning…
    BAD BAD!!! (for O/T)

  2. If you put in overtime for a compensation that you are looking forward to, that’s not too bad. Otherwise, overtime will translate directly into stress. That’s bad. You have good reason not to put in overtime at this time 🙂

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