Creating an incentive program for your employees can boost morale, increase productivity, and make a major impact on both sales and customer relationships. But leader beware, using a one-size-fits-all approach won’t cut it when it comes to creating a truly powerful program that will actually get your employees feeling empowered and motivated to get the job done. Read on for tips on how to understand what motivates your team, how to thank them appropriately, and encourage their efforts without breaking your budget.
Set Your Goals
When trying to encourage your employees to work harder to reach a goal, you’ll want to have a clearly defined goal for them to strive towards. Are you hoping to close a certain amount of sales this month? Are you trying to increase traffic to your website? Grow your Facebook audience? Generate a specific number of leads? Whatever the goal is, make it clear to the entire team and show them how they can achieve their goal. If you have a whiteboard in the office or a bulletin board in a central location, mark down your goal and assign a team member to track your success each week or month.
Motivation Matters
Perhaps the most important aspect of an employee incentive program is the employees themselves. Each team is different, and every team is made up of individuals who differ greatly in their personal connection to your company and their sense of self in the workplace. Understanding your employees and what motivates them as an individual can greatly improve your results. For example, does some of your team prefer getting let go early on Friday or would others prefer a team lunch out at a restaurant? Knowing what will motivate your team to work their hardest, can help improve their performance and take you one step closer to reaching your goal.
Gratitude Goes a Long Way
Not every incentive needs to be cash or salary-based. Incentive Mag offers a list of 10 ways to thank your team; methods range from public, verbal praise during staff meetings, to ongoing informal positive feedback. Be sure not to confuse empty praise with gratitude. If you single an employee out for a “job well done,” be prepared to offer a concrete, specific example, that highlights the quality of their work so that they feel seen, heard, and know exactly what your expectations are for their role in the organization.
Free, Or Almost Free Incentives
Beyond saying “thank you,” you can offer a number of other exciting incentives that will cost little, if anything at all. A featured contributor in Forbes Magazine relates his company’s approach to employee incentives that offer a large return for little investment, such as offering more flexible schedules, a dress code dictated by the employees, plus opportunities for in house training opportunities that reward eager learners who want to master the skills of their trade.
By building a culture of sincere gratitude for individual and team effort, you will create a stronger workplace for your employees and an overall better experience for your customers or clients.
Providing employees with an incentive to achieve a goal is a great way to elevate your customer or client service. Employees will be more willing to go above and beyond to create a positive experience in order to achieve their goals. There are many other ways to incentivize your employees to achieve company goals, what does your business do?
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