Stress-Free Performance Appraisals

5

The Many Facets of Compensation

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

—Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize winning physicist who revolutionized science.

 

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, it was not uncommon to think that the hungriest (literally) workers would be motivated to become the top performers and, therefore, should be kept at subsistence pay levels. Toward the end of the 18th century, the classical economics of Adam Smith took issue with this, holding that monetary incentives would motivate employees to work even harder.¹ A century later, Frederick W. Taylor, the “father of scientific management,” sought the “one best way” and the one fastest way to get a job done.² An engineer at Midvale ...