Performance Pay Design Series
In the previous post, we looked at why known performance pay reliably outperforms competitions. This post focuses on the third pillar of effective performance pay design: immediacy.
Even well-designed performance pay breaks down when payout is delayed. The amount can be fair. The math can be right. And yet behavior barely changes. Timing is usually the culprit.
A simple example
Imagine two scenarios:
- You complete a job today and receive $100 immediately.
- You complete the same job today but receive $100 in six weeks.
Economically, these outcomes are similar. Behaviorally, they are not.
Why time erodes motivation
Behavioral economists describe this phenomenon as temporal discounting. People subconsciously value money today more than the same amount of money later.
This isn’t a character flaw. It’s how human brains are wired. When payout is delayed, the psychological connection between effort and reward weakens.
Delayed pay feels abstract
When performance pay is delayed until the end of the pay period—or worse, buried inside a future paycheck— it becomes abstract. Workers stop associating the payout with the specific action that earned it.
At that point, performance pay stops functioning as performance pay. It turns into background compensation.
Immediacy creates a feedback loop
Immediate performance pay creates a tight feedback loop:
- Work happens
- Pay is calculated
- Money arrives
This loop teaches people, quickly and repeatedly, which behaviors matter. Over time, those behaviors become habits.
Why managers underestimate timing
Many operators assume they can compensate for delayed pay by increasing the amount. But increasing dollars rarely offsets delayed delivery.
In practice, a smaller amount paid immediately often outperforms a larger amount paid later. Timing is leverage.
What this means for field teams
In field services, work is physical, distributed, and often invisible once it’s completed. Immediate performance pay closes that gap by making effort visible and rewarded in real time.
This is why systems that calculate pay from completed work—and deliver it immediately—drive higher participation, better coverage, and more consistent effort.
Conclusion
If performance pay arrives too late, it loses its power. The closer pay is delivered to the work itself, the stronger the behavioral impact.
MyFieldPay helps businesses design and deliver immediate performance pay tied directly to completed work. If you’re rethinking how and when your team gets paid, we should talk.