Fast Food workers have been in the news recently thanks to demands for a $15 minimum wage that would act as a living wage for many individuals. But fast food companies haven't seen the idea as a good one. They are now looking to replace employees with kiosks that will be much cheaper than paying the employees who take their order.
An hourly wage in this job makes a lot of Sense. Employees spend their time behind a counter and deserve to be compensated for the time they spend there. But what happens in different organizations when time isn't necessarily used as effectively?
Hourly Wage in Enterprise Organizations.
Employees in bigger companies are often given a set of tasks to complete by the end of the day. These tasks can be anything from writing a paper to composing a presentation. In any case, the assignments can usually be completed before the end of the day happens. And when that happens, employees are left wondering what they should be doing.
Often, organizations don't have any more assigned work to hand out. That means employees can be stuck doing nothing for significant hours of the day. And that doesn't even include the lunch break that employees deserve. All this begs the question: Does it really make sense to pay an hourly wage?
Alternatives to an Hourly Wage.
There are existing alternatives to an hourly wage, and I would argue that they are much better. Performance based incentives are perhaps the best idea for employee payment, as employees are then encouraged to produce high quality work. These performance incentives could potentially include scaling deadlines, which would encourage employees to complete the project faster, but still with some quality.
Another alternative to the hourly wage idea is an agreement to a lump sum payment every month in exchange for a certain number of projects completed by the end of each month. This would allow employees the freedom to work on their own time and not waste any time in the office. And instead of worrying about paying employees every two weeks, companies could make things simple and cut the number of payments made in half.
