CONTROLLING

Poor remuneration of employees’ salary and wages

Introduction

Employee remuneration typically refers the compensation or reward that employees receive for their work performance. This then means that it is a method used in any business environment to promote morale, increase motivation as well as foster team cohesion. Piece rate method and time rate method are the two main types of employee remuneration used. Piece rate method is a type of compensation which is mainly based on unit production for instance assembling a unit or software programs while time rate method relies on the time spent by an employee on a particular job, for instance accomplishing a project in time (Boeri et al, 2013).

Abstract

Correctness and suitability of a remuneration structure is usually determined through its capacity of enhancing job performance. Adequate remuneration motivates employees to increase their output because their percentage of their salaries and wages has the capacity of meeting their living standards unlike inadequate remuneration. The rationale and controls for this situation is discussed below.

Analysis and defense

With regard to the plight of the FBI agents, first it should be noted that poor remuneration is always desirable in any working environment. This is because it cannot be able to motivate employees to be more productive. As much as their various duties are concerned, it does not necessarily mean it should be compensation based. Once the employees are satisfied with the system that is in place, it then means that they will be in the position of adjusting their living status. This is what will make them feel that they are praised or recognized for the good work done. Similarly, what this situation signifies is that their system is becoming inefficient in a long-term motivation. In accordance to that, team cohesiveness is largely lacking within their system (Boeri et al, 2013). Usually, remuneration that is awarded to the FBI agents teams assists in increasing productivity levels because the team will be seeking collective good of each team member.

Moreover, it is evident that majority of them are willing to do their duties of installing security through eradicating terrorism. Despite that, the inefficient salaries they are being paid have ultimately made them to create undesirable debts. Since they will be forced to settle them, this will cultivate corruption in return. The reason for accepting bribery is to assist them in meeting their debts or residing in a place which will be more convenient while working. Whilst taking bribes, it will make the execution of their duties to be inefficient (Kontrimas, 2006).

Pay rise cannot then be perceived as the right step to take. There must be a way of controlling this foe instance provision of housing and so on. In connection to this case, views that some of the agents are likely to resort taking bribes or indulging in corruption still remains to be an indication that the majority of the FBI agents are dissatisfied with their present remuneration structure. This is because the reward or compensation they do end up receiving at the end of the month or after accomplishing their task has no capacity of meeting their daily requirements especially the convenient place of staying (Kontrimas, 2006). Because of that there needs to be an efficient remuneration structure which will the ability of ensuring that the agents are able to live wherever they desires as well as improving their job performance. The reason for this is because although at times majority of organizations do have a wide variety of pay and salary arrangements, they remain to be of no significance because of not being properly harmonized.  Basically this can imply that local area work agreements, enterprise bargaining or competition on organizational structures are the controls which can be used to dominate the FBI’s remuneration system. Thus before coming up with some controls which are portrayed from this case, the management authority of their department should realize that because of the FBI’s complaints, it makes them believe that maybe senior management is the one which manipulates their system hence that remuneration only favors higher trained groups (I.L.C, 2003).

In connection to that, there are various types of controls which can be put into place so as to ensure that all the FBI agents are comfortable executing their work commensurate to the salary they get. Therefore, in order to ensure that the reward they may demand for maintaining their living standards, job evaluation is one of the controls that is portrayed in this case. Factor comparison, point rating, ranking, and grading are examples of systems which can be used for evaluating the work of employees. Each one of them can be for establishing an internally consistent system that not only differs but has the ability of ranking different tasks on its own scale that is high to low (I.L.C, 2003). 

Nevertheless, although different measures for each level of working might seem to be more appropriate at different levels, job evaluation will be adopted for the purpose of evaluating managerial duties. This then means that evaluating the job of any FBI agent should not be based on managerial work.  Although salary of any of them should increase with the increase in the level of work, for each position there ought to be a limit of rewarding in accordance to the kind of job done by any one of them working at a certain level.

Nevertheless, harmonizing the remuneration and the reward structure as well as creating a new framework for the FBI agent can also be used as another control for their poor working and living status. This is to mean that all the FBI agents need to feel that they are always rewarded adequately and efficiently for the job that they do. In return the reward will be shared fairly and equitably. In case their organization will fail to observe that, it will be risking ending up with severe morale as well as job performance related problems (Ton, 2014). In normal circumstance, an employee, for this case an FBI agent, who is properly motivated, has the likelihood of achieving a lot for their organization.

Thus for this control to be effective, what it means it that all the US FBI departments should each agent has received adequate recognition for their contribution to the organization. Such remuneration should consist of rewarding individual and team performance, incorporating incentives into overall reward structure, establishing as well as maintaining a well-coordinated FBI organizational structure which fosters both organizational and employee performance. Similarly, there is the need of implementing a compensation system which will reward all the agents fairly in spite of their position in the organization (Ton, 2014). This will entail matching remuneration with the FBIs contribution particularly where work requirements keeps on changing.

Regardless of such controls, it should be noted that some controls can end up becoming more relevant than others. From the illustration of the FBI agents’ situation, we can say that although they can be given various types of monetary and non-monetary forms of remuneration, for instance promotional opportunities, medical allowance, recognition and salary increment, the agents will still remain to be dissatisfied with their remuneration.  Various aspects of their work for example absence of commitment, little time spent at work station, poor quality of their work, and bad conduct whilst at work will still remain to be affected by the inadequate remuneration system with time wasting and poor quality being the most affected (Kumar, 2011). The type of remuneration and job evaluation should be in line so as to increase the agents’ morale, motivation, and consequently giving them the capacity of residing any place.

Conclusion

To sum up, the remuneration system of the FBI agents need to be one which has the capacity ensuring that they are comfortable working  through enabling them to meet their daily needs. This then means that it ought to be a method that has the ability of promoting their morale, increase motivation, as well as foster team cohesion whilst executing their duties. Conversely, with remuneration, the best performance appraisal system can end up failing is does not manage to enjoy the full support of the workers. The system should be in the position of rewarding good performance even though it is not relatively easy to strike the desired balance. In the long run, their organization should develop an efficient feedback loop between performance and motivation, incentives and morale. With job evaluation, the contribution of each agent to the realization of their organization overall goal, must be viewed by the employees and the organization as fair and equitable before demanding pay rise to meet their living conditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Boeri, T., Lucifora, C., & Murphy, K. J. (2013). Executive remuneration and employee performance-related pay: A transatlantic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Top of Form

Kontrimas, A. R. (2006). International expatriate employment handbook. Alphen a. d. Rijn: Kluwer Law Intern.

 

International Labour Conference. (2003). Protection of wages: Standards and safeguards relating to the payment of labour renumeration ; third item on the agenda: information and reports on the application of conventions and recommendations ; general survey of the reports concerning the protection of wages convention (no. 95) and the protection of wages recommendation (no. 85), 1949. Geneva: Internat. Labour Off

 

 Ton, Z. (2014). The good jobs strategy: How the smartest companies invest in employees to lower costs and boost profits.

Kumar, R. (2011). Human resource management: Strategic analysis text and cases. New Dehli: I.K. International.