Employee Productivity Incentives for Local Offices of the Employment Service: The Experiences of Kansas and New Jersey. Part 1. Incentive Design, Implementation, and Operational Outcomes

摘要

This study tested whether the provision of cash productivity incentives for local offices of the Employment Service (ES) could improve the performance of local office personnel without reducing overall employee job satisfaction. The Urban Institute worked with ES agencies in Kansas and New Jersey to develop, test, and evaluate group incentive plans for ES local offices in those states. The incentive plans were developed with extensive participation by local office management and staff through the use of Employee Advisory Committees composed of local office representatives. Each incentive plan utilized a mathematical formula to evaluate the performance of each incentive group (e.g. a local office plus any satellites) after every six-month incentive period. Each 'formula' employed objective, quantitative performance criteria with heavy emphasis on placement productivity. All members of the highest-ranking offices after a given incentive period received bonuses. The plans were tested for 18 months. This report gives the background of the study and describes the nature of the participating agencies, the incentive design process (including approaches for resolving design issues and specifying performance targets for incentive purposes), the implementation and operation of the plans, and the results of the trials--winners, losers, and the factors that influenced them.