Chief Inspector of schools Chris Woodhead and former Premier League striker John Fashanu may not seem obvious bedfellows. But they do have one thing in common: they have both reaped the benefits of performance-related pay.
Mr Woodhead, who receives a basic salary of Pounds 115,000, earns a performance-related bonus on top of that of up to 10 per cent. The 34 per cent pay rise, negotiated as part of a five-year contract, provoked uproar among teachers.
Mr Fashanu earned a basic salary at Wimbledon of Pounds 5,000 a week. This was supplemented by a performance-related pay bonus that earned the striker (cleared last year of conspiring to throw football matches for cash) an extra Pounds 2,500 for each goal he scored up to eight goals and another Pounds 5,000 for every goal he scored after that.
Performance-related pay is standard in the game, according to the Football Association. Players receive bonuses for all sorts of reasons. If the crowd rises above a certain level, they even get money for that, said the FA spokesman, adding: “Football is all about incentives to win the game and I suppose more than most professionals it is success-related.”
Other occupations are less forthcoming with performance-related payouts. The Law Society said it was up to individual firms how staff were paid but added: “It is not something we know about.”
There is currently no national performance-related pay in nursing although some national health trusts may have targets built in to additional pay awards, a spokeswoman for the Royal College of Nursing said.
Nurses are being promised a “super nurses” scheme that, rather than introducing performance-related pay, is likely to be a fast-track measure.
A spokeswoman for the health union Unison said: “There was a proposal in 1995 for performance-related pay in the NHS, but the review body considered it impractical because of the team work nature of nurses’ jobs.”
