Gary Brose, author of "Bonus Your Way to Profits!", has some unique first-hand insights into motivating employees and energizing the workforce. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of his book about how to design a productive bonus program.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENT #4

"S" IS FOR SIMPLE

1. easy to understand, deal with, use, etc.: a simple matter; 2. not elaborate or artificial; plain: a simple style.

Your bonus program must be Simple!

Yup, now there is some insightful advice! Wow, Gary, I thought these Eight Essential Elements were going to be, like, super secrets to success. Keeping the plan simple doesn’t sound very special or secret!

You’re right. It’s not a big secret and it’s not some incredible revelation. But it is absolutely essential and far harder to do than you might think.

What is Simple?

The goal is to construct a bonus program that is easy for the employees to understand and for Management to calculate. Employees should be able to explain it to others clearly and do most or all of the computations themselves. If the employees cannot understand how the bonus is calculated, then it will fail.

Shouldn’t be too tough! Still, it is much harder to do than it sounds.

Why does it need to be simple?

Let’s look at the reasons:

1. In order for the employees to "buy in" to the concept of your bonus, it has to be non-mysterious. You can’t use a hidden process to calculate the bonus amounts. The typical employee will mentally check out when they believe that only Management can compute the bonus because then they have no way to prove to themselves that they are getting a fair shake.

2. Imagine that the employee is going home at night and telling the spouse or significant other all about the new bonus plan. OK, maybe not ALL about it but at least the basics. If he/she cannot explain it in 1 to 2 minutes, it’s too complicated. So, either they won’t bother explaining it or they will botch the explanation, which will make them feel stupid, uninformed or worse. Remember, you WANT them to share this information. It creates even more buy-in when the employee tells someone else about it. Now they feel like they have to do well so they can brag about their success later.

3. You want new hires to be able to grasp it rapidly. Its always tough being a newbie. So much to learn and remember. But since the bonus is key to the job, it has to be simple enough to understand so that they can relate it to their everyday functions.

4. You want to be able to let your employees calculate it themselves. If it is simple enough that they can figure it out themselves, then they will have more confidence that it is on the "up and up".

MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES