American Express

 American Express

6.1) As an American Express employee, I would feel uneasy about having a significant part of my bonus tied to customers’ willingness to recommend the company to a friend. The upsides of this approach are that obviously there is more money involved when the customers do recommend the company to a friend and the downsides of this approach are how many customers are willing to take the time or effort to refer their friends. As a personal preference, I would rather have a significant part of my bonus tied to pay-for-performance which American Express does do. This is because as an employee, I get excited over results. In other words, I enjoy being recognized but not necessarily rewarded for my hard work. The rewards are extra for me but would be nice if it was offered. I do believe that I am a hard-working employee with great customer service skills. I work at Whole Foods Market as a cashier in the customer service department so when it comes to customer service, my performance always exceeds what is expected. However, in relation to this specific question, I would not feel comfortable about having a significant part of my bonus tied to customers’ willingness to recommend the company to a friend. This is mainly because if I was a customer, I would not take the time or effort to refer any of my friends – not because the company is bad or anything but I am honestly just lazy when it comes to something like that. A lot of people I know and see never really take the time or effort to do referral programs. Having a reward for referring on the customer’s end does help but not so much that it would change my feelings towards having my bonuses tied to it.

6.2) American Express’s Relationship Care strategies of pay-for-performance would be most motivational to me. This is because as said in the above paragraph, I do believe that I perform well at what I do. Not only does being recognized for your stellar performance feel good but being rewarded for it at the same time would feel even better! I know that being paid extra for performance would motivate me to do the best I can do at my job to earn that extra money. I do believe that this strategy has a lot of downsides, though. Some downsides include competition within the company, pressure to do well, and non-loyal employees. Competition can arise between employees to see who will do better in terms of performance when it comes to the surveys. If a company has a pay-for-performance, employees would feel pressured to do well in order to get a bonus and it might make them feel overwhelmed. Having this system means that employees are really just in it for the money and not really care about the company’s mission or goals, which is entirely up to the company if that’s something that they value in their employees. If employees receive bad feedback on the surveys, it should motivate them to do better to receive better feedback and more pay.

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