Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
There are managers in retail chain stores that get a bonus based on keeping hours below the level that triggers benefits and that includes avoiding overtime.
Many years ago I was paid as a contract programmer to analyze work hours for the purpose of determining bonus payments.
One of the stores constantly outperformed all the other stores in every manner one would use to evaluate employee performance and the overall cost of labor. Payroll was always the biggest expense in running the business. The manager here made sure everyone worked full weeks, got benefits and in meetings with employees always discussed the idea of working overtime or expanding the staff and cross-training to allow employees to work overtime in different job assignments. It was apparent that a slight boost in attitude and job satisfaction has a lot of benefits when it comes to on the job performance and efficiency. With all this going for the manager he was disciplined for violating company procedures and guidelines after the program was installed. He left and I never did find out how he did. A lot of the employees soon followed. No good deed goes unpunished.
One form of management in some environments amounts to nothing more than blindly enforcing rules. This manager should have been promoted but the management above him followed the rules.
I worked for a large retail chain ~10 years ago. We had one top-store manager who figured out how to play the bonuses just right. She knew she wasn't able to hit both sales and labor in the same month. So, one month, we would all get 10 hours a week. The store would look bare and customers would literally ask us if we were going out of business. Then, the next month, overtime! She would hit her sales goals.
So frustrating. I felt bad for people who really needed that income.
There are managers in retail chain stores that get a bonus based on keeping hours below the level that triggers benefits and that includes avoiding overtime.
Many years ago I was paid as a contract programmer to analyze work hours for the purpose of determining bonus payments.
One of the stores constantly outperformed all the other stores in every manner one would use to evaluate employee performance and the overall cost of labor. Payroll was always the biggest expense in running the business. The manager here made sure everyone worked full weeks, got benefits and in meetings with employees always discussed the idea of working overtime or expanding the staff and cross-training to allow employees to work overtime in different job assignments. It was apparent that a slight boost in attitude and job satisfaction has a lot of benefits when it comes to on the job performance and efficiency. With all this going for the manager he was disciplined for violating company procedures and guidelines after the program was installed. He left and I never did find out how he did. A lot of the employees soon followed. No good deed goes unpunished.
One form of management in some environments amounts to nothing more than blindly enforcing rules. This manager should have been promoted but the management above him followed the rules.
I worked for a large retail chain ~10 years ago. We had one top-store manager who figured out how to play the bonuses just right. She knew she wasn't able to hit both sales and labor in the same month. So, one month, we would all get 10 hours a week. The store would look bare and customers would literally ask us if we were going out of business. Then, the next month, overtime! She would hit her sales goals.
So frustrating. I felt bad for people who really needed that income.
