151 Quick Ideas to Inspire Your Staff

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Beware of the Seniority Trap

In the past, the tradition in American business was that for each year you stayed with a company, you got more money. It didn’t take all that many years for management to learn they had been trapped. It didn’t result in more productive people; it just meant they’d hung around longer. Why should that deserve more money? Why shouldn’t people be paid for their performance?

When a group of Minneapolis retail stores got in deep trouble because their payroll was grossly out of line as a percentage of sales, they had to make some drastic changes. Over the years, some of their senior people had gotten raise after raise, and it had gotten away from them. They had to completely replace their pay plan with a lesser hourly ...