Unachievable KPI's that effect bonus

ghutchison14078 · 24 Oct 2017 at 13:09

Hi folks,

Looking for some consensus on this:

My employer has recently overhauled the KPI's used to calculate performance, and in particular my bonus.

I am part of a 14 member field based service team (office print / production print equipment), our employer has brought in a new KPI that is activities per day (jobs per day basically).

In order to hit the KPI I must average out 4 jobs completed per day, however there is not enough work consistently available for every engineer in our team to make that target; the equipment has gradually became far more reliable over the years so doesn't require the same amount of maintenance also my company has also failed to win many large contracts recently so the number of devices under our care has dropped.

The way the other KPI's are weighted means that just a small dip in jobs per day has a dramatic effect on those other KPI's linked to it, for example not fixing a device first time, having to order a part to fix it or or taking longer to fix a particular model than my employer thinks is necessary.
A small dip in jobs per day will have a large impact on these other figures due to these not being "diluted" by doing lots of jobs per day.

In a nutshell, is it right/legal to KPI an employee on something that will all the hard work and skill in the world they cannot hope to improve due to external factors, and when such KPI has the ability to severely hinder their bonus earning potential?

Cheers

ghutchison14078 · 24 Oct 2017 at 15:02

hyperseven said:
Is the bonus discretional or in your contract?

Contractual, the bonus scheme was overhauled last year after a 30 day consultation period; non of the counter proposals put forward by the employee representative groups were taken on board. Amended contracts were posted out to be signed and returned, which i obviously did.

ghutchison14078 · 25 Oct 2017 at 16:51

Wink said:
Is there now too many engineers in the team?

For the volume of work available yes, however management have said there will be no redundancies as they wish to keep headcount and be more aggressive with pricing to pull in more contracts, anyone's guess how long that could take though.

ghutchison14078 · 31 Oct 2017 at 17:44

Thanks for the feedback an opinions fellas, I realise that I probably signed the new contract a tad hastily but when you've a wife with a new born at the time all I was really thinking about was job security.
I've no issue with being kpi'd on my work performance, just seems unfair that the most important kpi is utterly unachievable through no fault of my own.

ghutchison14078 · 31 Oct 2017 at 17:48

Energize said:
You agreed to it!

Good lord, you aren't entitled to a bonus as a god given right. If you aren't doing enough work to be paid a bonus why should you be paid one? It's hardly your employers fault that business has slowed down. Would you rather your employer be forced to pay bonuses instead and become insolvent?

Erm, ok. No I absolutely do not think a bonus is a "God given" right, however I do believe that the bonus targets should be in the realm of achievable.
Trust me when I tell you there is not an iota of a possibility the company paying out bonuses to the engineers would result in insolvency, my employer is a huge multinational company, a very very well known brand.