Corrections Community

Hello, Does anyone know if there is research about merit pay in parole or probation? I'm wondering if anyone has examined whether tying someone's raise to his/her performance has good, bad, or no effects on future performance. Thanks for your help. Carsten

As long as all of their evaluations are fair and unbiased it is a great tool to bring the under performers up to speed when they see that it can cost them money. But it has to be an unbiased eval not based on freindship or popularity or it will never work.

Thanks for the nice answer. Quite helpful.

I would add that this should be part of your established and ongoing performance appraisal processes. Meaning that performance standards, pay raise percentages, when they are conducted and how often, etc should be known up front to all staff at the beginning of the review period or when they join the team. There are some good articles on that if you go to about.com. Hope this helps.

Just my personal observation! Usually when someone gets a merit raise they will be determined to do a better job. However if you have someone at your facility just to "get a check" they may not care what their performance is,except to do what they have to do to get by. At our facility we were told their would be no merit raises this year due to the downturn in the economy and that this would prevent layoffs!!! Professionals are going to do their jobs, and do them well, they will eventually get noticed and will be rewarded accordingly.