Hi Efren and Others :)

    Here is a slightly modified version of what I sent to Efren earlier
today.... it might work  but then so does everything posted so far :)... Note...
there is a major chip builder in this neck of the woods that uses this type of
scheme... I know... I programmed it for them :) but that was a long time ago...

Art "hmmm... never thot about exponentials...." Bahrs

An Idea :)
    1.  Remove all employees who have missed 161+ hours from the total number of
employees eligble for a bonus.

    2. Divide the total dollars available for bonuses by the number of employees
who are eligble for a bonus.  Call this number the maximum potential bonus.

    2.a. Check that the maximum potential bonus is not greater than what the
management wants for a maximum bonus payout.

    2.b. Check that the maximum potential bonus is not less than the amount that
managements wants for the minimum bonus payout.

    NOTE: if any of the checks in Step 2 fail you must go see managment!  (This
could be a fate worse than death! hehehe)

    3. Now subtract from the Maximum Potential Bonus the number of hours that an
employee missed.  This encourages the employee not to miss any work because they
lower their bonus with every hour they miss.

    4. You now have the bonus for a given employee.... repeat Step 3 for each
employee.

Note, that this plan is based on the concept of the point of the bonus is to
encourage the employee to not miss any hours.

You could either increase or decrease the factor of the penalty for each hour
that an employee misses.  This would of course affect the amount of the bonus
but not the maximum potential bonus.

Note also, that the management team should set a max bonus... you could then
ensure that the maximum potential bonus could not exceed that bonus.


----------
>From: "Stigers, Greg [And]" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Off Topic - Programming
>Date: Tue, 11 May, 1999, 12:21
>

> X-no-Archive:yes
> Well. These limits are inconsistent with each other; I haven't seen anyone
> else address this yet, so here's my $.02.
>
> If you 'step' the bonus down from 1500 by approximately $6.28931 (1000/159)
> for each hour missed, you will have an even weighting given by hour.
> However, the 'average' employee (which is not statically meaningful for a
> small number like 80 employees) will have had to miss 89 to 90 hours to
> receive the average amount of $937.50. That's an above average number for an
> even distribution, and that's the tricky part. If people are missing an
> above average number of hours, the $75,000 will cover it. This year. Until
> the incentive begins to work, and people's attendance improves, until they
> get less money for improved attendance... The trick is how to both weight
> the bonus for hours (not) missed, and not run out of money.
>
> It seems that this would have to be done in two passes. The first pass would
> calculate an even distribution, and accumulate the bonus awarded on that
> basis. Then the program would have to evaluate if it had gone over budget,
> and, if so, reweight the distribution of the bonus by some factor, perhaps
> as simple as the percentage of $75G / original total. And even then,
> rounding can bite you by perhaps forty cents either way.
>
> Being lazy, for eighty people, I would do this in a spreadsheet. Or at least
> prototype it first, then code after I'm happy with the results. With hours
> missed for each employee in column B, column C would contain something like
> =1500-(B1*(1000/159)) to get the bonus, then total column C. If it's less
> than $75,000, you're done. If not, then replace the 1000 with the percentage
> that $75G is of this result, and that should be almost exactly $75G.
>
> Another approach could be to assume a maximum of $937.50 for perfect
> attendance, then step that down by about $2.75 ($437.50 / 159) for each hour
> missed. You'll never go over budget. A better approach would be to convince
> someone to choose an amount for this stepping, or just use $6.28, with $1500
> for perfect attendance, $500 for 159 hours missed, nothing for 160 or more,
> and let it seeks its own level. How important is perfect attendance, is it
> worth $120G to achieve perfect attendance across 80 employees, or did
> someone just pull numbers out of the air?