Some managers see incentive plans as a catch-all solution to just about any performance problem, according to Ann Bares for Workforce Management. She cites a WorldatWork survey which found 81 percent of U.S. employers are using incentives to get the most out of their employees. Bares warns against jumping right into an incentive program, though, without analyzing why performance is suffering in the first place.

"Incentives can be a powerful force for the positive, but they also have the potential to be ineffective and even damaging when carelessly thrown at ill-defined problems," she writes.

Bares puts forth six questions to ask before implementing an incentive program:

1. What, specifically, do you want to achieve by putting an incentive plan in for these employees?
2. What specific improvements -- behaviors and outcomes -- would the incentive plan be designed to drive?
3. Why aren't these improvements happening now? What's preventing them from taking place?
4. What kinds of difficulties or obstacles might employees face in trying to make these improvements happen? What might thwart their efforts to succeed?
5. If there is an incentive, how will employees respond to these difficulties and obstacles? How will they try to overcome them? What will they most likely do? Is this what you want?
6. Do employees have what they need -- the skills, experience, systems and support -- to overcome these difficulties and obstacles? If not, what is lacking?