By Bob Cowen, Snowfly representative
An employee incentive program must produce a positive return on investment, otherwise it’s not worthwhile. The objective should be demonstrable improvements in the usual areas such as increased sales of specific menu items, average ticket amount, improved attendance & timeliness and reduced early-stage employee turnover.
I’ve observed four tenets within the most successful employee incentives programs.
1. Reward the daily homework and the final grade takes care of itself. Take large activities and break them into their smallest components, rewarding them as they occur. When striving for increased sales of specific menu items, structure the program with daily goals and daily rewards. If improved attendance is a goal, provide a small daily reward in addition to a larger “five shifts in a row” award. Daily goals and rewards will achieve significantly greater improvements than weekly, monthly or quarterly goals and rewards. Continuous positive reinforcement is one of the best and most cost efficient methods of shaping behavior.
2. Work can be fun. Choosing which sealed envelope to take, playing spin-the-wheel, drawing a ticket from a bowl or other simple and quick games is a powerful way to inject even more excitement into earning and receiving an incentive reward, thus further reinforcing the activity. All employee incentive rewards must be positive; the fun variable is the random amount of the prize. Random intermittent reinforcement is another very powerful component found in successful incentive programs.
3. Give the reward as soon as possible after achieving a goal. If increasing sales or consistent attendance is a goal, reward it as soon as possible. Remember that when an activity is rewarded immediately, it’s much more likely to be repeated. Don’t delay the reward by including it in the next paycheck (at which point the reward also becomes expected, thus taken for granted).
4. Choice of the reward is crucial. Having rewards with little or no perceived value will not elicit desired behaviors. Allowing the recipient to determine their reward also solves the problem of the employee incentive program’s administrator not being clairvoyant about knowing what the recipient wants. Don’t force the employee to select overpriced merchandise from a catalog or web site or get a gift card for a specific store. The first thing they do with catalog or web site merchandise is to go the Internet to see how much less they could have bought it for. A better solution is a Visa or MasterCard debit card that provides the ultimate choice of rewards. It can also be accumulated for a larger reward to be redeemed at the recipient’s time of choosing.
One of the hallmarks of failed incentive programs is that they are perceived as “short term” solutions. Employee incentive programs must be on-going or activity levels will revert to their prior state. Unfortunately positive behaviors lack momentum to continue far beyond the cut-off point of an incentive program.
If you would like to know more, I suggest reading Games Work and Human Motivation. It is available at www.Snowfly.com and under the RESEARCH tab. Below the RESEARCH tab, go to WHITE PAPERS AND RESEARCH. The book is the top item on the list and it’s linked to Amazon. There are many other papers and articles in the White Papers and Research section that you might also find helpful; check them out.