Question:

Further the discussion by comparing and contrasting your initial responses to those of your classmates. Support your response with citations from the reading or other scholarly sources.

"Person-focused pay plans reward employees for acquiring job-related knowledge, skills, or competencies rather than for demonstrating successful job performance" (Martocchio, 2019, p. 109). This compensation strategy includes pay-for-knowledge, skill-based pay, and competency-based pay programs. In the case study, if Mitron chooses to implement a person-focused pay strategy, there would be some benefits of this type of pay strategy. One advantage of a person-focused pay plan is that it will provide job enrichment and job security for the technicians. Job enrichment will help motivate the technicians by allowing them to increase their knowledge and learn various skills through training and education, which can help in better job security. "Rather than being laid off during periods of low product demand, employees can perform a variety of jobs that draw on the skills they have attained through person-focused pay programs" (Martocchio, 2019, p. 122).

Although person-focused pay plans have advantages, they also have disadvantages. One disadvantage is that they can increase costs; hourly labor, training, and overhead costs can all increase. These plans require investments in training and development and frequent updates to pay scales, which can strain financial resources. Secondly, there can be potential conflict with existing incentive pay systems. It can be challenging to integrate both systems simultaneously. If an employee's pay increase for learning a new skill is less than the incentive award they could receive for having those skills already, they might not want to learn new ones when both person-focused and incentive pay systems are in place (Martocchio, 2019, p. 123).

Holly should implement a skill-based approach to designing a person-focused pay system. "Skill-based pay, a term used mostly for employees who do physical work, increases the workers' pay as they master new skills" (Martocchio, 2019, p. 110). This approach will incentivize the technicians to attend training and acquire the skills needed to complete the multiple steps in the process. The pay will increase as the technicians learn new skills. It will also help with the delays that Mitron Computers is experiencing when team members with specific skills needed to complete a step are absent or unavailable.