Rewarding Diverse Groups of Employees

Incentive Magazine recently asked experts from various award companies for their tips on motivating diverse groups of participants.  These companies plan incentive programs for employees with a wide range of backgrounds, interests, roles and, of course, award preferences. While there are obvious differences in employee backgrounds, communication strategies and award delivery preferences, motivating this diversity is more common across these lines than you might think. 

The following list of tips that offers good insight into the things you need to keep in mind when planning your award programs.  Some are more along the common sense side, but others may give you some good food for thought. 

 Understand Your Audience

Survey your employees to find out what is meaningful to them. You will already know much of what they say, but could also come up with some good ideas to put in the program. 

You can take surveys to the extremes with audience persona development, segmentation and generational components, etc., but that type of employee research would not really be necessary for most programs

Effectively Launch the Program

Most companies don’t put as much emphasis on this phase of the reward program as they should. They assume that just the mention of the programs and “what’s in it for me is sufficient to gain excitement at the beginning.  But better launch preparation will provide dividends and actually allow you to spend less on the ongoing communications phase throughout. The importance that your participants put on your program will be in direct proportion the effort and importance you give the launch. 

Clear and Consistent Communications

Communications doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective.  But you do need to take it out of your normal communications efforts and do it as often as appropriate for your organization. Communications about what employees can earn in rewards will be read and retained. If unsure how much and how often to communicate, err on the side of more and more frequently. In addition make sure your messaging is custom and speaks directly to the individual such as program standings, percentage towards qualification, and status updates etc.

Don’t Just Use Digital Communications

It’s natural to use digital as your first option, but old-fashioned printed pieces, posters etc are still very effective and enjoyed by most.  They are also often retained and shared with the family. 

Have a User-Friendly IT Platform

The award industry is loaded with the “best mouse traps” incentive software.  Our advice has always been “Don’t go hunting squirrels with a bear rifle.”  We estimate that UP TO 90% of the features in current software are either not or underutilized. It also needs to be easy to use. 

Recognize and Reward Teams

The incentive industry has known for years that you can get tremendous success by incorporating team awards in your program. Take advantage of it wherever possible, but use it in combination with individual awards.

If Using Travel, Tailor it to Your Employees 

If you using travel as the prominent award make sure you plan it with the participant in mind. Sun and fun can be highly motivation to the younger set, but not so much for older generations who may enjoy sightseeing and new experiences. And, don’t let your C-suite determine your destination based on where the executive wants to go. 

Don't Forget Gift Cards
When it comes to an award that appeals to everyone, gift cards offer the largest choice of any award in the industry. They have become by far the leading option for non-travel awards.

Make Sure It's Measurable 

This tip should actually be number one and not the last.  Without measurement you won’t have much motivation. Not having measurement is like bowling with a curtain in front the pins.  Make sure your objectives are measurable and communicate individual and team performance at the beginning, often in the middle and the end.

The Value of Points in Your Employee Recognition Award Program

 

The machinations of how the incentive industry has been hiding the price of awards in points-based systems have been around since the award stamp days (Blue Chip, S&H, Gold Bond etc.) where the redemption value of a book full of stamps depended on the grouping of merchandise items that could be redeemed.  With the inclusion of branded gift cards as part of the award mix over 20 years ago, they became the basis used to determine value of points in any type of points-based incentive or employee recognition system. 

The incentive/award industry fought the inclusion of gift cards with a variety of false information for years just to hide the value of merchandise awards that had become ridiculously higher than retail. By adjusting the number of points needed to redeem for an item of merchandise as well as the cost of the point the incentive supplier charged the client, you could easily hide the “price” of the award from the participant.  In past years it was not uncommon for incentive companies to change the cost of these points simply to camouflage the value.  We’ve seen them range from 1 cent to ½ cent to 1/32 cent to a dollar and every number in between.  Then all the incentive company had to do was provide “excellent service” to deliver these awards and everyone was seemingly happy.  

When gift cards arrived on the scene it was transparent what a $50 gift card should be worth in points.  By simply dividing the value of the card by the number of points needed to redeem for it, the cost or value of the point was apparent.   If you had merchandise included as an offering in a program the same calculation holds true.  It was then that folks started to see that the TV that looked so good in the incentive catalog had a point cost of twice or more what you could purchase the same TV at retail.

 It is no wonder that the growth of gift cards in the incentive industry has been exponential since their inception.  Today they represent by some research to be over 90% of all incentive expenditures.  And, when gift cards are available as an option along with merchandise in an incentive or loyalty program, the redemption of the points for gift cards vs the merchandise can easily exceed 95%.  If you don’t have gift cards in your recognition program and want to include them, expect a great deal of push back from your current supplier…. If included these suppliers will lose substantial profit.  

But isn’t the entire idea of recognizing an employee with an award to give them what they want with pricing that shows true value?  

 

 

Thank Them – Praise Them – Recognize Them

 

Remember those hopefully long forgotten days when we had bosses who thought that your pay check was “all the thanks you need?”  We’d like to think that they are long gone but unfortunately, we often hear that attitude is still very much present in today’s managers. 

We are in the “Thanks” business, it’s what we do, and we believe it because we know it works.  Unfortunately, there always seem to be a manager who defends the philosophy of not thanking employees and recognizing them for their performance on an often basis.  As social beings most of us intuitively know that thanks, praise and recognition is good for us.  We can’t recall a time when an employee every told us that they hated it when someone thanked or praised them for their effort.  They may have been embarrassed about how it was done, but that’s a different issue.  The American Psychological Association in a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed simply that a little gratitude does go a long way and motivates increased pro-social behavior. 

In our opinion not fostering a culture of thanks is unproductive, lacks judgment and we think it’s unwise.  It’s surely at least counterproductive for everyone involved.  Paychecks are great; it’s why they come to work, but it’s only half the contract.  It’s just paying what you owe, it’s not showing appreciation. 

Opposing managers often use these reasons why they withhold thanks:

• No one thanks me
• Thank people and they’ll only expect more
• If you thank one you have to thank them all
• I thanked an employee one time and he said ‘put it in my paycheck, who needs that kind of guff'
• Thank people and they’ll get false confidence
• I can’t thank people who need to improve

To these managerial types we say get over it.  It isn’t about you.  If your people expect more appreciation give it to them, they will deliver more to others and your workplace will warm up.  You don’t have to thank them all, but once you start you will naturally just thank more and more and it will become a habit.  And forget about the snarky ones, those are often malcontents who are looking around the corner at the next job move.

By simply choosing your words carefully it doesn’t mean you have to rise to the level of praising them, and then formally recognizing them.  But it is does start that cycle, that will result in a more engaged and productive workforce.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Individual or Team-Base Incentives? When to Use One, the Other or Both.

 

Twenty-five years ago, less than 20% of firms reported their workforce was engaged in one team or more at any given time.  Studies today show that teamwork and collaboration consume about 80% of the typical knowledge worker’s day. 

While most employees agree that team-based work is essential, only one-quarter prefer to work in teams versus alone.  Before the pandemic, 68% say the teams they work on were dysfunctional.   As business becomes increasingly global and cross-functional, silos are breaking down, connectivity is increasing, and teamwork is seen as a key to organizational success. 

When planning reward initiatives, designs to optimize team incentives is not immediately obvious or intuitive. The type of work that teams perform ranges widely and can change over time. For incentives to do good rather than harm, they should encourage the types of actions and behaviors appropriate to the work of the team in question – the right incentives at the right time. 

Things to consider when planning your team incentives might include:

 Whether the work of the team is highly-interdependent (tight team) versus loosely dependent (loose team).

 Organizations emphasize individual achievement when it comes to compensation, promotion, rewards and recognition because they’re comparatively easier to measure and administer.  Yet individual rewards might contribute very little to team dynamics and performance, or even detract from them.

 For a variety of reasons, team-based incentives and rewards may prove more difficult to administer (particularly in larger teams) because individuals come to their teams with different goals and contribute varying levels of effort and/or value.  Team rewards may even introduce issues where individuals let their teammates do most of the work while sharing equally in the reward. Adversely, individuals may have to give up personal recognition for the benefit of team performance.

There is a growing body of research that offers compelling evidence that where small teams engage in highly-interdependent work, team-based rewards drive better performance and outcomes than individual rewards.  This is possibly driven by intergroup competition.

 In small, highly-interdependent teams, hybrid rewards – which recognize team achievements and the behaviors and productivity of individual team members – can drive the best results of all. 

 As small teams become more interdependent, better communications and greater cohesion will result in better performance.

 When a team does not perform highly-interdependent work, greater communications and cohesion might actually harm performance; largely because it is time-consuming and unnecessary. Here, individual incentives are likely more effective.

 So do the research. Determine if you have tight teams (highly interdependent like a volleyball team or restaurant crew) or a loose team; whether you have small teams (10 or less) or large teams (more than 10 members.)

Small and tight teams are more effective at driving performance than large and loose teams.  For large and loose teams consider using Hybrid awards that reward the teams’ accomplishments as a whole and rewards the behavior and performance of the individuals as well.