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#1404504 - 06/16/10 05:40 PM Incentive for a specific department
rodeofan Offline
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Texas
I am new in this area, and have overheard conversation amoung a department; take outages for instance. We have a policy in place about teller outages (which is not being enforced with any consistency; I know, first problem), but as an incentive to balance, they have been offered a small bonus for any teller with perfect balancing during a specific time period. Now I don't know about anyone else, but if you are paying someone to do a specific job (and they are not) why would you offer them a bonus to do the job they are already being paid to do. This is really taking a toll on moral. How would a new HR person approach this situation?

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#1404556 - 06/16/10 06:46 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department rodeofan
#Just Jay Offline
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While I agree with you in principle, here are a couple of items to consider when looking at a 'balancing bonus':

One therory exists that says by offering and paying a small balancing bonus is a cheaper incentive program in the long run than, than offering no incentive to do better. This saves more money by not have to incur the costs of terminating staff, and then advertising, interviewing, hiring, training new staff, and simply improves outages, and the overall customer experience.

Depending on your shop and market, one may not want to pay top dollar for top doller tellers who are less liekly to make mistakes. So pay them less, get a lessor quality employee, and use the balancing bonus as a hedge to sloppy work, but still cheaper than paying top dollar for top dollar help.

IMO, the prestige of getting your step in the door at the local bank as a teller no longer exists today like it once did. In many places, it has become nothing more than a retail sales position, and is treated and compensated as such. This is partly due to management perogitives, as well as from customers who have lost respect for local banker, and simply see banking as another commodity as special as the local fast food joint (hard to blame them when you have 6 banks at the same corner offering the same product, the same promise of service, with the only differance being the free gift to get you in the door).

And I think entry level staff see it the same way... too few see it is a career path anymore (since all they see in their town is the retail branch, with the main offices in another county, state even), but simply a filler on their resume.

Just my two cents.
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#1405303 - 06/17/10 08:49 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department #Just Jay
GoneToTexas Offline
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We also pay a small bonus to tellers who have no outages during the month. Tellers with the best balancing records are recognized at the end of each year. One problem I see with it is that a teller may be tempted to plug a figure or use a "kitty" to make the drawer balance.

Case in point: Customer comes in and says, "I realized after I got home that I received $20 too much when I cashed my check yesterday." Teller showed no outage for the previous day, and admits that he/she put the extra $20 in the drawer so that it would balance.

If you have several branches, you may also find that your hardest working tellers rarely earn the incentive. They peform 10 times the number of transactions because of their branch location... and are more likely to be out of balance simply because of the volume.

I tend to agree with you - why give a person a bonus for simply doing their job? But we are all under such pressure to sell, cross-sell, compete... I guess it's the times we're in!

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#1405363 - 06/18/10 12:15 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department GoneToTexas
edAudit Offline
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Case in point: Customer comes in and says, "I realized after I got home that I received $20 too much when I cashed my check yesterday." Teller showed no outage for the previous day, and admits that he/she put the extra $20 in the drawer so that it would balance.

And when they are over do they take the money out?
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#1405877 - 06/18/10 09:57 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department edAudit
GoneToTexas Offline
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Originally Posted By: EdAudit

And when they are over do they take the money out?


Of course they do. And in either case, they get fired for turning in a false balancing report.

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#1407357 - 06/23/10 08:17 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department GoneToTexas
kiemo Offline
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All comes down to increase in bad moral within the other departments. Our financial gives a bonus to staff that
'cross-sell' customers over to the trust and investment departments...you could cut the air with a knife and feel the bristling when that staff member goes up in a meeting to collect their 'bonus' $'s.

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#1408342 - 06/25/10 05:14 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department kiemo
madukes Offline
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Originally Posted By: kiemo
All comes down to increase in bad moral within the other departments. Our financial gives a bonus to staff that
'cross-sell' customers over to the trust and investment departments...you could cut the air with a knife and feel the bristling when that staff member goes up in a meeting to collect their 'bonus' $'s.


I was an AA in a lending area in my previous job. I had it out with my manager at my review because of course the administrative staff did not get bonuses but the lenders did. I told him that we contributed to the success or failure of the department and the lenders meeting their goals and it was not right that we did not receive any extra compensation. (we typed up all the loan docs - last minute mind you - typed the approvals, questioned the lenders on missing paperwork, forms, etc. - we made sure everything went through correctly).

Of course he did not agree with me but then he had extremely poor managerial skills which led me to transfer to a different dept.

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#1408642 - 06/26/10 01:13 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department madukes
Andy_Z Offline
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First, employees need to realize that not everyone gets the same deal. Different areas get different pay packages. It is a fact in many banks.

Second, employees get paid. Originally I was against paying employees incentives to do their job. That is what "pay" is for. But as Just Jay says above, some people are under paid and incentives for good work are meant to bring that up for those who perform. This isn't limited to the best teller, but all tellers who balance, as an example. When they pay closer attention and balance better, and you find you are ahead of the game, the program is a winner. Certainly there are pros and cons for every program.

We had tellers as entry level employees. They could "work up" to being in loan admin as an example. Those positions for the more experienced paid more. But one issue we found was that with incentives, good tellers wouldn't leave because they'd get a pay cut.

The bottom line is, not everyone gets the same deal. Lets focus on the success of the organization, and the individuals happiness. If a person isn't happy, lets find a place where they will be. Do they want to get teller incentives, be a teller.
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#1411044 - 07/01/10 09:56 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department Andy_Z
wavewatcher Offline
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our FT teller incentive was a 1/2 day off for no balance errors for the quarter. once a month, i posted the FT tellers pictures who balanced. tellers preferred the 1/2 day off to money (though they did lobby for both).

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#1413165 - 07/08/10 11:13 PM Re: Incentive for a specific department wavewatcher
BetsyS Offline
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Not to put a negative spin on things, what about setting minimum balancing standards for tellers? Most of our tellers are well seasoned and few have had balancing issues. But we established guidelines and balancing expectaions which we use to evaluate their job performance on reviews. And yes, I've had to let tellers go that did not meet the minimum expectations, but only after working with them to try to improve their perforfance. They are told the standards up front, so no moral issues.
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