Employee incentives are a proven way to motivate employees, increase productivity and retention, as well as align your organizational goals with employee goals. However, do you know how efficient your incentive program is? It may be working, but not as well as it could. With a fresh new year, now is a great time to take stock of your employee incentive program and find ways to make incentives work better. Roy Saunderson shared 10 tips with Incentive Magazine on how to make incentives work better, here are our top 3 tips:
- Align incentivized behaviors with organizational goals: Aligning employee behavior with organizational goals seems like a no-brainer, but it can be a challenge. Using incentives to steer employee attitude and behavior is a strategy that helps align employees and management, increasing employee satisfaction and retention. We wrote more about the role value-based rewards play in program outcomes a few months ago.
- Create a personal experience around receiving incentives: Not all employees want to receive incentives the same way. Some employees may want public recognition while others may cringe at the idea of it, opting for a more private recognition. Some may prefer merchandise and others could place more value on a gift card to select their reward on their own time. Making this experience special, memorable and unique for the individual is the best way to ensure that your incentive program is effective.
- Never let incentives take over for human motivation: This is an important one, and we in the incentive space don’t address it often enough. Incentives cannot take the place of that “fire in the belly” human motivation. The real tip here? Don’t over incent your employees. Don’t dangle so many carrots in front of them that they won’t move without one. Find the balance, and make it work for you this year.
What are the most efficient employee incentives in your office? Leave us a comment!
