Can Employee Incentives Go Too Far?

Employee incentives can be great when offered and given at the right cadence and the right size for the occasion. According to a new study by the  Association for Psychological Science's Minds for Business, people who had been promised a higher reward for completing a task and thus had heightened levels of dopamine in their blood, had more difficulty completing simple tasks. This definitely seems like a long shot with a lot of extrapolating. However, the same theory could apply to employee incentives. If employers offer too much in the way of incentives for employees, employees can be so blindly driven by the incentives that the quality of their work falters because they lose sight of organizational goals and get so focused on the incentives at hand. You can avoid this situation by offering small "spot" rewards that come as a surprise to employees and are not pre-announced. When employees don't expect a reward, they are driven by their goals and company missions, not a reward they never knew was coming. Keep it simple and small to keep your employee incentives effective.
To learn more about the study or how to keep your employee incentives in check, head over to Inc.com.