Jiang Zehui
ABSTRACT
As a core management tool to motivate employees and improve performance, incentive mechanisms are critical for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to attract talent and enhance organizational cohesion amid fierce market competition. This study focuses on DG Company, a medium-sized manufacturing SME, exploring the relationship between four incentive mechanisms (compensation, reward, recognition, and career growth) and four employee performance dimensions (work efficiency, quality, teamwork, and learning ability) to clarify how each incentive dimension affects performance and propose optimization strategies balancing short-term execution and long-term strategic goals. Results show that DG Company’s incentive mechanisms are generally well-implemented with high overall employee performance, notably that compensation, reward, and career growth incentives have a statistically significant positive correlation with all four performance dimensions while recognition incentives show no significant correlation. The study confirms that incentive mechanisms are crucial for improving employee performance. To address existing issues, it is recommended that DG Company may enhance policy transparency, clarify incentive standards, and that employees actively provide feedback and participate, so as to optimize the implementation effect of incentive mechanisms and support the long-term development of the enterprise.
Keywords: Differentiated incentives, employee performance, incentive mechanisms, small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises
https://doi.org/10.57180/ivwz9356