QA technician bonus program

Hello All,

I work for a USDA facility and have 10 QA technicians that work in our QA department. They are all paid on a hourly basis but I wanted to set up an annual bonus program that will give them some motivation to work towards something. Also, I wanted it to be fair to all.

Please share your experiences and some ideas as to how I may be able to accomplish this.

Thanks,

Vijay

Great idea. I'd chat to your HR / personnel department but you could do it on company performance or personal performance (or a mix of the two).

For company performance, you could chose quality measures but I wouldn't chose it for everything. So, for example if you want to have a <x CPMU figure for year end, perhaps also have a measure of profitability? It's important not to be a functional silo IMO, and quality personnel as much as anyone have to realise they contribute to the whole company.

Alternatively (or additionally), you could have a personal performance thing. I.e. set objectives for each of them, they are likely to be different for each person and include personal targets as well as project work outside of their normal role. So, for example you could have for one person "To develop your presentation skills by doing xxx by this date" and they could also have "Reduce light weight complaints by 20% by year end" or something similar. You then review this regularly and at the end of the year and then how well they've done against these measures counts to how much bonus they get.

The latter way is a lot more work but I suspect more effective in motivation. After all, believe it or not, money does not motivate people. In today's workplace and financial pressures, perhaps things have changed but spending time with their manager and being told "well done" or "you need to work on this, here's what we can do" is far more motivating so the second option allows you to do that (which keeps them happy) and also allows you to award the bonus. Lots of work but that's what management is all about!

Thanks for your response. You have mentioned some great ideas. The challenge for me is that we are trying to get the QA techs to focus on the day to day checks as we are setting up a comprehensive programs for QA verification at each critical step from receiving to shipping. So instead of special projects route I wanted to see if there are any creative ways to include a bonus program from the day to day checks using KPIs that may have worked for other companies.

Thanks

Thanks for your response. You have mentioned some great ideas. The challenge for me is that we are trying to get the QA techs to focus on the day to day checks as we are setting up a comprehensive programs for QA verification at each critical step from receiving to shipping. So instead of special projects route I wanted to see if there are any creative ways to include a bonus program from the day to day checks using KPIs that may have worked for other companies.

Thanks

Then I'd say stick to the overall KPIs that those checks influence, e.g. number of quality incidents, waste, complaints etc.

Although it's worth saying that the pay they are given is in payment for them doing their day job. If they're not doing their day job I would be focussing on being firm and possibly discipline if things don't improve rather than bonuses.