The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of Merit Pay and Incentives as motivators for increased productivity. The key focus is the system at Richmond Memorial Hospital. To do so, one must begin at the beginning..... The use of financial incentives (financial rewards) paid to workers whose production exceeds some predetermined standard was popularized by Frederick Taylor in the late 1800s. As a supervisory employee of the Midvale Steel Company, he had …showed first 75 words of 1714 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1714 total…PAGE NUMBER FOR DIRECT QUOTE)..         A properly structured incentive-driven system (IDS) provides several methods and levels of compensation. All IDS systems must be tailored to each organization. What works in a hospital may not work in academia (Dressler, YEAR?). It is usually a mistake to implement an incentive plan without input from employees. Management should use a program design team composed of employees and supervisors. They could work with Human Resources in the development of