How to motivate Technical Support Team by paying incentives?

Due to the Covid situation, we have asked our support team, who provides technical support to our customers, to work from home. We are noticing that all the team members are working as per expectations. Therefore, we are in a situation to come up with an incentive-based package to motivate the team and get the work done.

Considering the following example, our initial plans are:
1. Current monthly take-home salary of the staff is 50,000.
2. We will pay 75% (37,500) as a salary.
3. We will hold 25% (12,500) and pay a portion, full, or even none of this amount based on performance.

Any ideas or suggestions, please share them.

You are looking to introduce a variable pay component linked to performance within the existing pay structure. For those employees who are going to receive less than 50K, this may act as a disincentive and could potentially harm the company's prospects. By appropriately adding incentives within the current pay structure, it could become more appealing as your goal is to motivate employees to enhance customer service.

Dear Smartcard,

This is in addition to what KK!HR has written.

Whenever employees join the company, they are issued with the Appointment Letter. In the letter, a breakup of the salary components is mentioned explicitly. This brings clarity on what would be statutory deductions, additional deductions, performance incentives, and above all, what would be the take-home salary.

If you wish to implement a performance-based salary structure, could it conflict with the structure mentioned in the appointment letter? Would it be permissible as per the labor laws of your country?

By the way, is your query on the "motivation of the employees" or "amending the salary structure of the employees"? If it is the former, why do you think that money only motivates the employees? A motivated employee produces high-quality work, requires less supervision, comes up with better ideas, and so on.

If you wish to improve the motivation of the employees, you may create a Career Development Plan (CDP) for each employee. Nothing encourages a person to perform better when there is clarity on what will happen in one's career in the future.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Hello KK, HR, and Dinesh,

Thank you for your feedback. I want to clarify one subject: our plan is to terminate some staff and offer a few of them new contracts for them to work from home. In this case, the existing contracts will not be effective. This is the reason we are looking for an optimal solution to motivate the team who are going to work from home based on their work output.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Dear colleague,

Your first and second queries are worlds apart. You should have refrained from hiding your motive. In the first query, you are carving out a portion of the existing pay structure and showing it as an incentive, which shows a lack of sensitivity and imagination. In the second query, your intention to terminate some employees first and then offer selected few new contracts for work from home with some incentive-packed pay is concerning. Termination itself is the biggest demotivation. How will your incentives help them and you?

Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant.

Hi Nagarkar,

It is not that we are going to hide the motive. This is just a brainstorming and information gathering post before we take any decision.

Dear colleague,

This forum is not an academic institute to brainstorm hypothetical issues. Though the advice shared by learned colleagues on this forum is free, nonetheless, it carries the weight of long working experience and wisdom. Whatever your motives were, you could have clarified them in the first place and not after they were sought.

Thanks and Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant

Implementing incentive pay isn’t constantly the manner to head. Incentives can't replace a sturdy tradition and intrinsic motivation.
Incentivize pay for Technical support team may be a extremely good tool to boom motivation and productivity.
A right incentive pay system must contain productiveness goals; consumer satisfaction; and a Quality Assurance score that displays other performance metrics essential to the corporation.

Hello Sheetal-Kamble,

Thank you for the opinions, and I will consider the following from your post:

- Incentivizing pay for the technical support team may be an extremely good tool to boost motivation and productivity.
- A proper incentive pay system should include productivity goals, customer satisfaction, and a Quality Assurance score that reflects other performance metrics essential to the corporation.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or need further clarification.