On-the-Job Tasks and Performance Pay: A Vacancy-Level Analysis

Abstract

Drawing on a dataset of job openings posted at an online job board, the authors find that employers are less likely to offer performance-based pay when a job entails multitasking, quality control, or team work than when a job does not entail these tasks. This finding is consistent with the notion that when employers have difficulty measuring a worker's overall performance at jobs with these dimensions, they offer weaker performance incentives to ensure that workers allocate their efforts to every task they were hired to perform. The observed pattern persists when different forms of performance incentives are considered, such as bonuses and commissions, but is weaker for non-sales jobs or jobs that entail multitasking.