In working with a prospective client just this afternoon, we had a wonderful conversation surrounding employee incentive programs and what he had learned in trying to run one in his company last year.  He was in a bind, seeing that his employees were gradually becoming disgruntled and disengaged.  To quickly respond to the problem, he developed an incentive program into the culture to which it failed miserably six months later.  Why did it fail?  For several reasons.

Not Thought Through - he thought implementing an incentive program was easy and could happen at the snap of a finger.  Incentive programs can be as easy or complex to implement, but without a proper strategy or knowing your objectives in the first place, what’s the use?  An entrepreneur would never go into an investors meeting unprepared and without a solid business plan, right?  The same applies to creating the right incentive program.  Know who you want to incentivize, what you want to get out of the program and how much you want to spend.

One Size Does No Fit All - the other point of failure was that there was no  segmentation or distinction between various departments, employee abilities, or personalities when it came to dolling out incentives.  It’s important to keep in mind that each employee has their own individualities and their own idiosyncrasies.  What motivates an employee in a management role might not motivate another employee who is in a customer service role.

Be Willing To Switch Up - lastly, it’s important to keep the incentive program fresh and exciting so that employees remain engaged and excited to continue participating in the program.  You could add interactive games with prizes as an example.  Another idea is to keep the rewards fresh and relevant to what’s on the market today.

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There been much chatter in the news in the past several months of Company XYZ laying off 30% of its workforce, or yet, Company ABC just filing for bankruptcy protection.  Employees within many companies that may be in these situations are running scared.  They are worried that their jobs (or careers for that matter) might be in jeopardy.  With tension in the workplace being high, it has a direct effect on overall performance - negatively.

Implementing a thoughtfully planned out employee recognition program into your company will help ease employee worries and let them know that ‘it’s ok’, and that ‘yes, you do matter and are appreciated.’

Recognize Performance - when employee morale is low, overall performance and profitability suffers, which compounds on an already dark forecast.  I hate to say it, but an employee who is worried whether their contributions will matter in the first place is less likely to work to the best of their abilities.  Just by the manager stopping by and offering a congratulatory pat-on-the-back or a tangible gift will let the employee know that they do matter and will feel motivated to work harder.

Strengthens Employee-to-Employer Relationships - when an employee completes a task, and a manager recognizes them for that accomplishment also creates a stronger bond between the boss-to-employee relationships.  Yes, the task that the employee just completed was most likely ‘part of their job in the first place’, but it sends a signal to the recipient that their boss really values the work that they do.

Before you go and slash budgets for this next year in employee recognition, think of what damage that might do for your company’s bottom line on a long term.  If your company is struggling, I’d argue, it’s quite the opposite approach you should be taking to employee recognition, increasing budgets and opening the lines of extending a thoughtful hand of appreciation.

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Key #1: If you don’t at least put some careful consideration as to a strategy when tackling the issue of creating a culture of recognition through an employee program in your company, you might as well be playing darts at the local bar.

I’ve spoken with so many companies in the past year who are looking to create an employee program for their company of which many of them really have a keen understanding of what employee programs are all about.

In summing up some ‘best practices’ gathered from scores of client programs from the past ten years, almost all the employee programs implemented started with some commonality:

-  Defined Objectives: clients know what the problems are in their company and have clearly pin-pointed each issue to set qualitative and quantitative results.  Knowing clearly what you are looking to accomplish greatly helps in determining the right scope, design, implementation, and yes cost, of the employee program in the first place.

-  Defined Rules: establishing a set of rules around your employee program will help in setting boundaries for your workforce to work with.  They will have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them and how they will be rewarded when they perform certain tasks or complete activities.

-  Good Set of Rewards: make sure the rewards are appropriate for the audience it’s intended for as well as it matches the behavior.  Don’t be giving keychains as a reward for 20 years of committed service.  At the same time, however, perhaps offering an HD-LCTV for just showing up to work on time, might be a little overboard as well (plus, will kill your budget pretty quickly).

Whatever form your employee program may take, just planting one for this next year will reap benefits for your company and yield a positive impact on your workforce.  A well-thought and strategically implemented employee program will definitely keep you on the right path to increased employee engagement and measurable results from your return on investment.

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In my January 24th blog, I talked about the critical importance of keeping a solid hold on employee incentives post a company-wide Reduction in Force.  After the fire lifts, the employees who ’survived’ are left with an increased work load but with less workforce resources.

The right employee incentives program will help empower your managers to step up and recognize their employees; singling out exceptional performance and commitment to the company.

They Are Worth It - in my opinion, keeping an employee incentives budget alone during cuts is mission critical.  The lack of any type of incentives within an organization can perhaps be one of the largest demotivators a company can do.  Offering rewards allows employees to feel valued within the company along with the re-assurance that they are worthy of investment.

Everybody Stay Calm - the first smell of a reduction in force can lead to widespread panic, mis-communication, and damaged morale.  Those who are truly valuable to your company’s sustainability should be appropriately rewarded to offset any uneasiness they may be feeling.

The biggest misconception is that employee incentives is the real reason why a company has to do major budget cuts in the first place.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite in the fact it will work positively in keeping the right employees around for a long time.

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Last year, a large manufacturing company in the heartland of America implemented a new employee recognition and rewards program.  Two years in the making, there seem to be a slight struggle in the beginning to top executives as to the cost, risk, and return that a rewards program would really bring the company overall.  ”It’s going to be too expensive!”, one executive claimed.  ”We could put a small budget towards a rewards program, but we’ll have to pull the capital from another resource”, another exclaimed.  And a third argued, “what I can promise you, if the rest of you trust me, is that you will see huge returns from this rewards program in how our employees view us as leaders, our company, and themselves because they feel appreciated and valued.”  See, the third executive, while going out on their own limb, is right.  Yes, as more companies are tightening their belts and bracing for more economic challenges in the near future, it’s easy to loose sight of spending more money, especially on your employees.  But when you see through all the clutter and the weeds, you’ll find that the engagement of your employees and the critical role a proper rewards program plays in that is far greater than any number on a piece of paper.

Last week, the executives at this particular manufacturing company got back together to review the results of how the employee rewards program did in the first year of operation, and the results they found were astonishing.

In a company-wide survey conducted by the Human Resources employee development manager, over three-quarters of the entire workforce population responded positively to the statement, “I feel more motivated to do my work”.

In looking at the numbers, sales teams throughout the entire organization had either met or exceeded their targets 96% in each month during 2011.  In 2010, sales managers were pushing for their reps to hit 85%.  What was the difference?  Sales reps had incentives to shoot for - achievable goals with tangible rewards.

But perhaps one of the most meaningful returns the executives discovered, that the company experienced 15% less employees leaving Y-o-Y.  The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of employees will leave a company of their own free will because they did not feel engaged or appreciated by their former employer.

Use the lessons the top executives from above learned, the returns in implementing an employee recognition and rewards program far outweighed any costs involved in setting it up or operating in the first place.

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Just yesterday, online customer loyalty & engagement resource provider, WiseMarketer.com posted a blog that I think bears sharing.  The notion, being, there is research supporting the argument that the more your engage your consumer market in their opinions, they more likely they will feel a loyalty to your brand.  Bluntly put, company’s who invests in market research and gathering consumer opinions will reap the benefits through loyal customers.

According to market insight solutions provider Cint, “62% of consumers surveyed said they are more likely to purchase a brand’s product if they were asked their opinion in a study.

56% of the 1,200 consumers who participated in the Cint survey responded that they tended to feel more loyal to a particular brand that includes them in market research studies or polls.  Additionally, 77% of consumers “felt that brands listen more to what consumers want now than they did ten years ago.”  The trend of listening to the very people that use your products is taking hold, and it’s not going away.

Let this be a lesson to all those companies out there who are struggling with justifying budgeting market research for the next fiscal year.  While you might think the stigma that consumers are annoyed to be approached in answering questions about your products, you’re wrong.  A 1 - 5 minute survey will not only give you valuable information in the betterment of your product, but build a valuable relationship and establish long term customer loyalty.

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In this fast paced and competitive marketplace, it’s critical to always worry about staying ahead and what’s the bottom line.  What will come back, however, to haunt you long-term, is ignoring the level of engagement and excitement of your workforce.  Perhaps, already, you have an employee incentive program in place, but is it really enough?  Is it being monitored?  How is it managed?  Does everyone understand how it works and how to use it?  Far too often, an employee incentive program left unattended, can easily fall by the way-side and neglected.  

When that happens, it has the potential of becoming more of a joke around the water cooler rather than an important piece to the engagement puzzle.

In the past several years, corporate America has seen the critical need to increase employee engagement within their workforces, but scrambled to put something in place as a quick-fix, and didn’t really pay attention to how it was going to work.  What ends up happening is a lot of money spent for not much return.  Doesn’t seem to be such a sound business decision I’m imagining.

All, however, all is not lost.  If you find yourself with an incentive program, but are still struggling on keeping your employees happy, perhaps, just a little tweaking might be the answer.

When in the process of tweaking your employee incentives program, make sure you involve the very people that participate in the first place.  Not only will this give you valuable feedback on what is working and what is not, but it will give them a sense of ownership and will be more likely to be engaged in future projects.

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I recently finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s book, ‘The Tipping Point’ and discovered how top human resources executives at corporations around the country could benefit from it’s teachings.  ’The Tipping Point’, proposed by Gladwell, is “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”  In today’s society, ideas, messages, and behaviors, are spread similar to a virus - very quickly and over mass quantities of individuals.  The reason Gladwell’s ideas are relevant to human resources is once you can harness the power of influence, you can greatly affect the success of your company’s employee program.

To keep with the analogy of a virus, you must first create an ‘epidemic’ within your workforce to get everyone excited about the employee program and its benefits.  Gladwell describes that there are three distinct groups critical in the success of creating an ‘epidemic’.

There are Connectors - connectors are individuals who seem to know everyone.  Don’t ask how they know everyone, just accept the fact that they do.  Connectors are critical in the process of creating an epidemic because they “have the ability to span many different worlds”

The second group are what Gladwell likes to term, ‘Mavens’.  These individuals are ‘information specialists’.  There are employees within your organization that have that talent of knowing everyone’s name, what department they’re in, their roles / functions, a perhaps, personal information.  As Gladwell states, “Maven are really information brokers, sharing and trading what they know.”

The last group are the ‘Salesman’ (a.k.a. ‘persuaders’).  These are your rockstars - employees that everyone looks up to, model themselves after, of have great working relationships with.  These individuals are your key group to go out and ’sell’ the ideals of the employee program to the masses using their keen ability to influence.

The take-a-way from all of this is better understanding your employees in what specific roles they may play in creating an ‘epidemic’ will yield massive results in the success of promoting your employee program to the organization.

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As of December, 2011 the current unemployment rate in the US is at 8.5%, which is the lowest it’s been in the past 5 months, but the general workforce population could still use some comfort.  Many companies, to tighten their belts have had to do massive reduction in force to just keep in business for some.  The damage of a company-wide RIF can leave the rest who are standing uneasy and afraid that they may be next in round 2.

This is where having a solid employee incentive program within the fabric of your company’s culture is uber-critical.  Offering those employees a little something of appreciation, recognition, not only will incentivize them to work harder, but will also decrease the probability that they, themselves, will start to look elsewhere.  Employee incentives can take many forms, but it’s important to keep in mind that you don’t go overboard and destroy the year’s worth of budget in the first 30 days.

Plan your employee incentives carefully and consider those who will be participating in the program in the first place.  Survey your workforce to gather information on what their thoughts are.  What are their biggest concerns - is it the uncertainly of having a job tomorrow, or perhaps it’s that they’ve been working 80 hours the past 4 weeks straight with not even an extension of a hand in thanks.  What you’ll soon discover is that the challenges that are revealed by your employment staff directly affect the performance and longevity of the company as a whole.

Also, don’t be afraid to seek outside consult or invest in a 3rd party provider who might be better equipped to run your employee incentive program for you.  This not only will streamline to processes into one centralized solution, but in the long-term will return huge dividends to your company and to its bottom line.

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Sure, it’s been widely understood (and embraced by a growing percentage of corporate America for that matter) that when you extend the hand of employee recognition in the form of a tangible gift or a reward, that it will yield positive returns in a happier workforce.  What cannot, however, be overlooked, is the other side of employee recognition, which is knowing those who work around, or for you.

Now, for smaller companies, say less than 100 employees, it’s really that difficult to get to know those whom you work with on a daily basis along with how their role or position fits into the overall corporate picture.  Larger companies, however, may find this to be a never-ending struggle.

One such large company that is paving the way for innovative thinking with regards to employee visibility is online apparel and footwear shopping giant Zappos.com.  With approximately 1,800 employees, CNNMoney ranked Zappos this past year as 6th (up from 15th in 2010) in the ‘Top 100 Best Companies To Work For’ listing.  Why?  Perhaps one of their secrets is their continuing commitment to have everyone get to know each other.  For example, when an employee goes to access their internal database systems, as part of the login procedure, they are required to view a photo of another employee (selected at random) and identify who the person is before  getting access to the company’s mainframe.

For those of you who may work for a company with 1,500+ employees, I have a challenge for you right now.  Think of those employees in your company who you really are familiar with; how many names do you really know?  I’ll bet you the number that you come back with is lower than you think.  And if it is one the high side, then cheers to you!

The point I’m want to make is that visibility needs to be part of a company’s employee recognition plan.  The more people know about each other on a personal level, the easier it becomes to have a better understanding of each other and appreciation for what each employee brings to the table.

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