I have been with my company for over 5 years and have been in a management role for 3. I recently took a new position in another department as a Team Manager. Besides myself, there are 5 other managers each of us operating teams of 10 -15 Team Members. I have worked closely with these Team Managers for years (I used to train their Team Members) but have never been in their department before.
Team Managers make bonus each week the amount dependant on meeting certain metrics established for our Teams.
If any of our Team Members make a mistake during the week, however slight, a ticket is submitted to report it.
There are two type of these tickets:
- Type A -Team Member made a mistake and it cost the company money.
- Type B - Team Member made a mistake but we were able to fix it without any cost
If a Team receives 3 or more of these tickets (of either type) in one week, the Team Manager is not eligible to receive bonus, even if their Team met or exceeded the other metrics.
During my second week in this position a Team Manager approached me and advised that one of my agents had made a mistake that did not result in a cost to the company so they were sending me the details but they were not going to report it because the managers never report issues without a cost so as not to cost each other their bonuses for something that was a minor mistake.
It caught me off guard and I really didn't say much at the time but this did not sit well with me. Later that night I submitted the ticket myself reporting my Team Member's mistake.
My issue is twofold:
I dont want to participate in this type of behaviour but I also don't want to alienate myself amongst a small group of people that I rely on daily.
An underlying problem is that the system is too strict allowing the tiniest of mistakes to have a massive impact on a Team Mangers' pay when no real harm was done and the issue could be resolved quite easily. Such a system, in my opinion, creates an environment ripe for such behaviour. Normally, I would suggest a redesign of the system to my bosses (they have before and would again listen to such proposals). The problem I face here is that the last 9 months of data shows that such errors are not prevalent and therefore there does not seem to be a reason to redesign the system. It seems that in order for me to show my boss that there is a problem, I would have to inform them that the Managers have simply not been reporting mistakes which has been skewing the numbers.
How should I handle this?