How to Motivate, Incentivize and Manage The Performance Of An Employee at a Start-Up

The Agile movement was created for this purpose — it seeks alternatives to traditional project management. Project management has always been a system to monitor project deliverables by tracking the allocation of resources — people being the most important one.

Agile approaches help teams respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative work cadences and empirical feedback. The scrum master helps keep the team focused, removes obstacles in the way of success, and protects the team from distractions.

To incentivize the team as a whole, you must reward the team as a whole

The Agile method and scrum is inherently a motivating movement. Incentivizing the team, on the other hand, is external to that. To incentivize the team as a whole, you must reward the team as a whole (bonuses if the team acheives development targets etc.)

Total compensation is what will attract the kinds of candidates that you need, and get them to stay. This includes pay, stock options, bonuses, benefits, vacation time, paid time off for various reasons that reflect company values (volunteering, professional development, etc), and parental leave benefits (salary top ups). The simplest and most straightforward way of knowing what compensation will attract the right candidates is to seek comparables from other companies, or to ask the candidates themselves.

Base compensation is the price you pay for the exclusive use of a person’s talents. To extract work from that person, to get deliverables done on time and on target, those iterations are motivated by other incentives (meaningful work, professional development, leadership opportunities, and growth).

Google HR boss explains the only 2 ways to keep your best people from quitting_​In today’s knowledge economy, people are often a company’s most valuable asset, and losing talented employees can be…_www.independent.co.uk

The lavish perks that Google is known for — free gourmet meals, in-house massages, and dry cleaning on campus — are nice-to-haves but ultimately not game-changers.

Laszlo Bock, the SVP of Google’s People Operations said “The dirty secret of all these perks is it doesn’t actually retain people or even attract people,” Bock said. While the perks may provide efficiency, community, and an inviting atmosphere, he believes they ultimately won’t swing people who are thinking about leaving.

Compensation and incentives are two totally different strategies for two different goals.

For more in the series on The Absolute Minimum a Start-Up CEO Needs to Know About HR

1. How To Find Good Candidates to Hire

2. How to Hire and OnBoard An Employee

3. How to Motivate, Incentivize and Manage The Performance Of An Employee

4. How to Foster Healthy Company Culture and Avoid Conflict that Will Cause Your Company To Fail

5. How to Fire An Underperforming Employee