Research: How Incentive Pay Affects Employee Engagement, Satisfaction, and Trust

An exploration of three common bonus approaches.

by

and

Karina Nielsen

by

and

Karina Nielsen

March 15, 2017

Most managers would agree that motivated, productive employees are crucial for organizational success, regardless of company size, industry, or corporate strategy. The question is how to motivate them. Offering employees performance-based incentive pay is one common approach, and it usually takes one of two forms: bonuses are offered to individuals based on assessments of their performance, or bonuses are offered as organization-wide incentives, such as profit-related pay or share ownership.

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Chidiebere Ogbonnaya is a Senior Lecturer at University of Sussex Business School and a co-investigator for the ESRC-funded Work, Learning and Wellbeing evidence programme. His research focuses on employment relations, job quality, employee well-being, and business research methods.
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Kevin Daniels is Professor of Organizational Behaviour in the Employment Systems and Institutions Group, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia. He is the editor of the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology and the lead for Work and Learning at the UK’s national What Works for Wellbeing Centre, which produces evidence based practice and policy guidance for improving well-being.
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Karina Nielsen is Head of Institute for Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. Her areas of research relate to understanding how to improve employee health and well-being through job redesign.

Research: How Incentive Pay Affects Employee Engagement, Satisfaction, and Trust

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