• Rewards are not considered significant. What happens when a CP plan includes pay increase and other rewards that are so small that they don’t differentiate between outstanding and poor performers? For example, what happens when the top performers receive a 5% pay increase and an average performer receives a 3% or 4% pay increase? In this context, rewards are not viewed as performance based rewards, and they do not make an impact. The message sent to employees is that performance is not something worth being rewarded. For rewards to be meaningful, they need to be significant in the eyes of the employees. Usually, an increase of approximately 12%-15% of one’s salary is regarded as a meaningful reward and would motivate people to do things they would not do otherwise.