Finally, after years of industry experts providing research on how effective gamified employee incentive program are,
Incentive Magazine has come up with a formula for how to prioritize and rank employee incentives and rewards. The SAPS hierarchy will help guide you to design the optimally effective employee rewards program to meet your organizations budget and your employees' motivational needs. Here is how SAPS works and why. Status: Think about boarding a plane, the most loyal airline customers always get to board first. Shouldn't your most loyal employees get first pick for things like which days they take vacation. Your most loyal employees don't want the same 5 year anniversary gift that sits like a paperweight on their desk. Allow them to chose something that reflects their loyalty in a way that matters to them. Access: Give access as employee incentives. These types of employee incentives don't hold any monetary cost but does hold intangible value to employees. Access to their C-level executive for lunch one day could incent a junior level employees to work hard and stay motivated to get some facetime with a high-level employees that they don't normally interact with. Power: Allow employees to gain power through peer leadership. Power doesn't need to come through promotions, but can be earned by becoming a peer leader. Employee incentives can earn them a spot to lead an employee committee on organizational recreation or an employee committee on safety. Good behavior should be met with more opportunities to exhibit good behavior. These types of employee incentives create a natural culture of leadership and professional development. Stuff: Stuff should come last. Once an employee has reached past the first three levels of employee incentives, that is when you can reach for a bonus, or a gift card, or even a paid vacation. Stuff should come last, because an employee should have worked loyally through many other levels of incentives before an employer simply hands over the goods. However, when an employee does earn "stuff" incentives, it is because they are your most loyal employees, most deserving of incentives.
