In order to reward performance that is above average, many contracts, especially those involving professional personnel, have pools of money to be distributed on the basis of merit. These may be one-shot bonuses or permanent additions to the employee's base salary. Whoever is in charge of deciding how this pool of money is to be distributed is in a no-win situation. Disproportionately large sums to certain individuals will always bring cries of favoritism from those less rewarded. This leads to jealous behavior, which in turn reduces productivity.
Forms serve two purposes.
First, they let the employee think that he or she actually has some input into the decision making process. Second, they give the decision maker an excuse to do what he or she wanted to do anyway since there usually are no specific guidelines as to what factors are important. Even if there is a labor contract in force for an organization, whenever it is time to make salary recommendations or distribute Christmas bonuses or even decide who is getting promoted, forms can be a key to effective leadership. Recently, the author was privileged to come across a form so cleverly conceived that it can be used for all situations described above and much more. This generic merit form is presented in Figure 1.