Incentive Pay Can Bolster A Company's Revenues

Nation's Business, Nov 1, 1998 by Thomas Love

If the nature of your business lets you document the impact of worker ingenuity on the bottom line, it might be worthwhile to incorporate incentive pay into your employee-compensation package.

Monthly incentive pay has proved successful at Total Comfort Care in Camp Springs, Md., says its president, Jim Betz. The firm has contracts to manage the heating and air-conditioning equipment in 40 apartment buildings in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. "We take over the mechanical plant-including preventive maintenance, operation, and system tweaking," Betz explains.

The firm guarantees the buildings' owners a specified level of monthly energy-cost savings compared with their costs before the contract. "If we do not operate the plants properly" and thus fail to deliver the promised savings, says Betz, "that comes out of our pockets."

He adds, however, that when Total Comfort Care's building managers hold energy use below the levels set by the company, they share in the savings. "We pay a bonus ... on a monthly basis so they can actually get the money in their pockets," Betz says. "This motivates them to get out there and really look for ways [to save energy], because they know they're going to get something out of it right away"

Betz adds: "I strongly believe in sharing the wealth with the technical people. They do the work. They are the ones out there getting dirty I feel they should participate in any profits we make.

"We have such a variety of mechanical equipment that every day is a personal challenge to go out and discover something new that's going to result in savings for the company and put some additional money in their pockets for their families."