Performance Rewards: What’s the Standard?

Performance rewards go a long way in building a positive relationship between employer and employee.  Over  70% of ag companies have a structured performance system in place, according to AgCareers.com.  This data recently released by AgCareers.com, in the annual Agribusiness HR Review, a survey that benchmarks human resource practices and trends among agricultural companies.  Undoubtedly, agriculture identifies with the opportunity to support growth and achievement within the industry while creating value for the workforce that supports it.

On What Factors are Performance Rewards Based?

Over 90% indicated staff performance was linked to rewards ensuring that employees must meet establish goals and objectives to be rewarded.  In addition to staff performance, companies also used company performance, individual performance as basis for performance rewards. Additionally, team performance (42.17%) and business unit performance (33.73%) were also noteworthy factors, a new trend for companies aiming to support the efforts of collective groups of employees working toward a common goal.

Agribusiness companies have several reasons for providing performance rewards, seeking mutual benefits for both employee and employer.  75.82% of companies use bonus / incentive rewards to improve business performance, while 71.43% of companies indicated achieving business objectives was their purpose.

Ag companies also said that a bonus program kept employees challenged and productive in their roles, 80%, among other initiatives like training and development(75.82%), promotion (62.64%), and notably succession/career planning (47.25%).  It’s also important to consider how the rewards program aids in communicating recognition and appreciation, an important element of job satisfaction for the employee.

What Best Describes the Staff Performance Reward?

The majority of employees in all classifications (57%+) were reported as being eligible for bonus / incentive rewards from the responding companies. Profit share as a performance reward was a notable but far less common incentive for each classification. Sales staff were more likely to receive commission (43.37%) tying more immediate efforts in revenue to what employees may earn.  Executives were more likely to receive long term incentives (18.07%), which works to ensure decisions are aimed at long term profitability and success within the organization verses short-term goals. 18.07% of hourly/non-exempt staff received no performance reward, and this is perhaps an employee category being overlooked in performance reward scheme.  38 of the 91 participating companies awarded bonuses to 91% to 100% of employees in the last year (41.76%).

Annual performance systems are implemented 77.11% of the time, followed by 12.05% implemented quarterly.

Get more statistics like this from the Agribusiness HR Review from AgCareers.com.

*For the purposes of this article the U.S stats from the Ag HR Review were utilized.