BA450 Unit 6 Staff Incentives Paper Example

Five Hundred Dollars in December or Ten Dollars a Week: A BA450 Unit 6 Incentives Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA450: Organizational Behavior Management

Unit 6 Incentives Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the agency, the homes, the staff and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

The Director's Proposal

In November, our agency's director set aside about twenty thousand dollars to improve staff performance and retention across our four group homes for adults with intellectual disabilities. Her proposal was a five-hundred-dollar bonus in December for every direct support staff member employed at least six months. She asked me, as program coordinator, whether the money could do more if spent differently.

The question is a behavioral one. A bonus paid to everyone once a year, regardless of performance, may be welcome and may help retention, but it is not contingent on any particular work. Whether it changes what staff do each evening depends on how it is connected to performance.

What the Research Says About Monetary Incentives

Bucklin and Dickinson (2001) reviewed research on individual monetary incentives, arrangements in which part of an employee's pay depends on measured performance. They found that incentive pay generally produced higher performance than hourly pay alone. Several of their findings were practical. The size of the incentive relative to base pay did not seem to matter as much as might be expected; small incentives often produced improvements similar to large ones. What mattered was that the incentive was clearly tied to measured performance, and that the connection was understood by employees.

That finding challenged the director's proposal. A large annual bonus that does not depend on performance offers little reason to run teaching programs on a Tuesday in March. A small incentive that depends on that work, delivered often, might.

A bonus in December cannot reach a Tuesday evening in March unless something connects them.

Why Staff Leave

Retention mattered as much as performance. Our agency loses nearly half of its direct support staff each year, and each departure means a new hire to train. Kazemi et al. (2015) surveyed behavior technicians working with individuals with autism about their intention to leave their jobs. Satisfaction with training and supervision were among the factors associated with intention to stay or leave, along with other aspects of the job. Their findings suggest that how staff are trained and supervised matters to retention alongside pay.

For our agency, that meant an incentive system should not stand alone. Staff who feel unsupported may leave regardless of a bonus.

The Design

I proposed splitting the budget three ways.

Weekly team incentive: each home with completed programs at or above its goal for the week, and spot-check accuracy at or above 85 percent, earns a ten-dollar gift card for each evening staff member who worked that week. The goal and the two measures are already graphed each Monday, so staff can see where they stand. With about twenty-four evening staff across four homes, the maximum yearly cost is about twelve thousand dollars, and the actual cost will be lower.

Recognition: each month, house managers nominate one staff member for specific work, such as teaching a resident a new skill, and the director writes a personal note and mentions it at the all-staff meeting. Staff with the highest spot-check scores choose their preferred shifts first for the next schedule.

Retention bonus: the remaining eight thousand dollars funds a smaller bonus of two hundred and fifty dollars at six months and one year of employment, the points at which our data show most departures.

Team Versus Individual

Bucklin and Dickinson's review focused on individual incentives, which link pay most directly to each person's work. I chose a team incentive at the home level for two reasons. Programs are often run by whoever is free, so individual credit is hard to assign; and staff told me that competing with each other would damage cooperation on busy evenings. The tradeoff is that a team incentive can reward someone who did little. Spot-check accuracy data help, since each staff member's checks are recorded, and house managers can address individual performance through feedback.

Safeguards

Incentives tied to data create a risk that the data will be inflated. The spot-check accuracy requirement protects against this: completing sheets without running programs would not raise accuracy. I also check the binders against unannounced observations monthly, as I did when designing the measures.

Asking Staff What They Value

Before finalizing the design, I asked evening staff at all four homes what would make the job better, using a short anonymous survey with ranked options. Gift cards ranked third. First was a predictable schedule, posted at least three weeks ahead, and second was being thanked by someone above the house manager. Several staff wrote that they would rather have paid time to finish documentation than a reward for rushing it. Those answers reshaped two parts of the plan: preferred shift choice moved into the recognition tier, and the director agreed to post schedules four weeks out. A behavioral account of incentives does not assume that money is the only reinforcer at work; it asks what actually functions as one for the people involved.

Results From the Pilot

The director approved a three-month pilot at two homes. Program completion at the pilot homes rose from an average of 82 percent to 91 percent, and both earned the incentive in ten of twelve weeks. At the two comparison homes, completion stayed near 80 percent. Staff surveys at the pilot homes rated the incentive positively, though several said the recognition notes from the director meant more than the gift cards. The cost was about two thousand dollars for the three months, well under the budgeted share, which left room to extend the pilot to the other homes in spring.

The Broader Evidence

Gravina et al. (2018) reviewed organizational behavior management in human services and found that consequence-based interventions, including incentives and praise, were among those that improved staff performance, often combined with feedback and training. Our pilot fits that pattern: incentives worked alongside graphs, feedback and training, not in place of them.

Conclusion

A five-hundred-dollar bonus for everyone, paid once a year, was unlikely to change daily work. Bucklin and Dickinson's review supported small incentives clearly tied to measured performance, Kazemi and colleagues' findings pointed to training and supervision as part of retention, and Gravina and colleagues' review placed incentives within a package. A pilot of weekly team incentives with recognition and accuracy safeguards raised completion at two homes.

References

Bucklin, B. R., & Dickinson, A. M. (2001). Individual monetary incentives: A review of different types of arrangements between performance and pay. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 21(3), 45-137. https://doi.org/10.1300/J075v21n03_03

Gravina, N., Villacorta, J., Albert, K., Clark, R., Curry, S., & Wilder, D. (2018). A literature review of organizational behavior management interventions in human service settings from 1990 to 2016. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 38(2-3), 191-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2018.1454872

Kazemi, E., Shapiro, M., & Kavner, A. (2015). Predictors of intention to turnover in behavior technicians working with individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 17, 106-115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2015.06.012