VideoAll of these employees, except for Menicke, worked under the Atlanta office managing director, Patrick J. McCall, who White and the former executive say was responsible for a pattern of withholding or denying payment.
"I would love to investigate each of these stories," responds MPS Group vice president Tyra Tutor, noting that only White has actually filed suit. "It is frustrating that they can make these statements without providing any documents to prove that [they are] true."
Two other ex-employees, however, made similar statements under oath in depositions for White's lawsuit. Senior manager Toni Lyons, whom White replaced, testified that Idea regularly underpaid her. "Invariably, the amount I calculated was never the amount my practice director calculated.... I can tell you with certainty that over the course of a year's period of time [the shortfall] was probably in...the [$50,000] to $60,000 range."
Former business development manager Ray Hammons was fired a year before White was hired, but echoed White's claims in his deposition. "The way that bonus plan was administered was an absolute nightmare and a joke," said Hammons, who has never spoken to White. "Basically, Pat McCall would decide whether or not and how much to give you. It didn't pertain to anything regarding the plan."
Hammons said he was fired because he challenged McCall and another company executive for taking a group of employees, including several women, to a New Orleans strip club during a PeopleSoft conference in October 1999. He claimed that he, too, had trouble obtaining his overdue bonuses through McCall. He ultimately managed to collect most of what he was owed after he contacted Idea Integration CEO Tim Payne (now MPS Group's CEO).
Payne was "pretty upset" about the strip-club incident, Hammons recalled. Payne fired the executive responsible, and Hammons subsequently received $14,500 in outstanding bonuses and an additional severance check for $25,000. —T.R.
Why Bonus Plans Fail
A recent study shows that bonus plans often fail to motivate specific employee behavior because they are too nebulous. According to "The Knowledge of Pay Study: E-mails from the Frontline," a 2002 survey published by WorldatWork of more than 6,000 managers and employees at 26 organizations, only 24 percent of employees agree that their cash bonus plans actually change their behavior. Sibson Consulting senior vice president Peter LeBlanc, who conducted the study, thinks that if salespeople and executives (who typically are highly attuned to incentive pay) were excluded from that group, that percentage would drop even further.
Moreover, few employees actually understand how their pay and performance are connected; only 28 percent say they know the size of their bonus "well before it is paid." Indeed, even "right before it is paid," 41 percent of employees do not know the amount. "In other words, there is too much discretion in the eyes of employees," sums up LeBlanc. The only way cash bonus plans work, he adds, is if they are transparent. That means employees must understand exactly how performance — both theirs and the company's — translates into dollars on their paychecks, and they need frequent updates. —T.R.
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