What Motivates Best in the Workplace?

For years we have followed LinkedIn discussions from a variety of groups such as the Harvard Business Review, HR Professionals Worldwide and LinkedIn HR.  There are a tremendous number of knowledgeable HR professionals on these sites and subjects and discussion topics that can keep you involved for hours. 

“What Motivates Best in the Workplace” is a topic from a while back that brought responses from HR professionals from literally from every corner of the world.  We often see the employee engagement we deal with on a daily basis as particular only to our own culture, but they are not.  Everyone has to deal with them to one degree or another.  What is interesting is that there is a lot of commonality in the answers, regardless of the cultures. 

The topic question above added some subtext to it to stimulate the responses.  This subtext included:  “Is it money, personal ambition, team, leadership, all of the above? When faced with a demotivated workforce, what common thing among people consistently brings out the best in us all?”

If you would like to read the string of responses from places like Saudi Arabia or India, please click here.  We think you will find it interesting

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Have a Wonderful and Safe Holiday Season

All of us at Ultimate Choice wish you and your family a safe Holiday Season and Healthy and Happy New Year.

Thank you for your support this past year and we sincerely appreciate the trust you’ve placed in us to provide you with the finest gift card recognition award system to achieve your objectives.  

Designing the Best Workplace Wellness Program

As discussed in our last post, wellness programs have been around for at least two decades but there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence that they achieve their stated goals.  The reason according to the experts is that they are rarely designed and implemented properly.  This paper by Johns Hopkins provides sound advice on ways to make a wellness program successful.  Following we have listed some of that advice. 

Administering health risk assessments only

Simply surveying employees for risk and even providing the screenings and other health tests does not motivate change.  You must give your employees tools like making wellness activities convenient and accessible and give them the ability to track their behavior.

Give it time

Health change is a process that needs to be sustained.  It will take up to five years to start to lower health care costs and decrease health care use.  You won’t change poor health habits by just asking employees to fill out a questionnaire.

Long term financial incentive programs are popular but not necessarily effective

Inducements to motivate change are based on behavioral theory of consequences that drive behavior.  Consequences must be positive, immediate and certain to be effective.  Financial incentives are certainly positive, but very uncertain when dealing with health change and never immediate. Large incentives that an tie as much as 20% of the cost of health coverage to achieving a health goal are very rare.  

Offering smart incentives

There is strong evidence that incentives to drive participation rates, preferably $ 50 to $100 will keep employees engaged and motivated to begin efforts to achieve self-determined health goals can be effective. 

Short term promotions ineffective

Short term or random acts (Biggest Loser, Pedometer challenges etc.) may be good to add excitement at the beginning or your program but not effective in the long term. You need to concentrate more on long term progress. 

Effective communications are essential

A healthy company culture is built intentionally.  Use communications to build a total health model into every aspect of business practice, from company policies to everyday work activities. Use communications that’s supportive of career, emotional, financial, physical and social well-being – not just an health fair.  Strategic communication will lead to lead to greater engagement

Leadership commitment and support 

It should go without saying, but complete commitment from all executives and continued ongoing support at all management levels is critical to a successful health promotion.  They must also lead by example. 

You can’t impose workplace health

Workers must own the program, understand how they benefit and the company benefit and are given a role in the ongoing operation with regular surveys and focus groups.

There are a myriad of ideas and things that can be done to build a culture of health in your organization.  By searching those out and adhering to the above practices you have the best chance of implementing a program that will produce the long term results you are looking for.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Do Workplace Wellness Programs Really Improve Worker’s Health?

Workplace wellness programs have been around for more than a couple decades, but there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence that they achieve their stated goals.  Most any kind of programs that companies implement are evidence-based with statistics to back up the program performance.  For wellness programs there is scant evidence based information on whether they produced desired results.

Most of the data on wellness programs comes from the vendors who actually provide the programs and that data can be questionable and fraught with data gathering mistakes.  For example for weight loss programs they may show: weight changes only for those

participating in the program vs those who don’t; no before or after measurements to show changes based on the program vs other random variations; no analysis for workers who may have regained weight after the program; reporting average weight loss per those who lost weight, but not disclosing what actual percentage of employees lost weight, etc. It would seem that the wellness vendors want to report only successes, not failures.   

While the chief goal of a wellness program is to improve employee health, the companion

goal is to control healthcare spending. It is hard to get an accurate view of how well these programs work because many unsuccessful programs just aren’t reported.  However, these programs can work.  A study by Johns Hopkins provides evidence that when properly designed and implemented, a wellness program can add to the health and productivity of the employees and the profitability of the business. 

In addition, Johnson and Johnson has published dozens of studies showing their wellness programs have improved employee health, saved millions in health care costs and

enhanced employee productivity.  They designed their programs with the proper measurement and analysis as a starting point and continue throughout with smart collection and analysis of data. 

Without the data at hand, many companies pick and choose options for wellness programs blindly which can do a disservice to employees and their company.  In the end, you don’t necessarily need the latest fashion fitness wearable or new tennis shoes to start your program.  What you do need is sold analysis, data and the metrics necessary to prove the results on an ongoing basis

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Combining Human Drives for Better Reward Programs

In their book “Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices,” Harvard Business School professors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria laid out a new theory on human behavior. The idea: we are all influenced and guided by four drives: acquiring, bonding, learning, and defending. Recent research by the Incentive Research Federations on the neuroscience of behavior economics discusses these drives and their significance to current reward and incentive planners.

Nohria and Lawrence found that the drives act as motivational “hot buttons” and when pressed individually motivation can rise marginally…but when combined motivation can grow exponentially causing large impacts to engagement, retention and commitment.   The IRF research essentially concludes that reward and recognition systems can provide companies with a powerful tool because this single intervention can activate these four drives.  Let’s examine each drive in relation to a reward and recognition program:

Drive to Acquire

Employees are driven to acquire tangible goods, intangible skills and status.  Reward systems are driven by goal setting which requires clear and defined consequences for achieving them.  They train managers to recognize positive work performance aligned to the behaviors they are trying to achieve.

Drive to Bond

Employees desire to have authentic relationships with other employees. Companies want employees to work in partnership to solve difficult problems.  When organizations provide rewards for group achievement they are working in tandem with the drive to bond.

Drive to Innovate

It’s natural for employees to want to learn more about their company as well as the world around them.  They can use the knowledge to create new thoughts, systems, processes, relationships and goods based on what they learn. Organizations can add time to their recognition efforts to allow employees to learn and formulate ideas, awarding them for those ideas that are implemented.

Drive to Defend

Employees want to be safe and secure and they will defend the objects, people and ideas they hold dear.  Companies want to minimize the activation of this drive and the negativity that comes along with it.  They can use the communication channels associated with reward and recognition systems to remind employees often of their importance to the companies mission. 

In summary the IRF research maintains that…

“In a single instance of giving an employee a reward or recognition, the organization allows an employee to acquire status (and potentially good or services), to bond with their team or the person giving the recognition, to more deeply comprehend what is important to the organization, and to defend the very deeply held belief that he or she is good at what they do and has chosen the right organization for employment.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Do You Have a Do It Yourself Sales Incentive Mentality?

The traditional carrot-and-stick type incentive programs put the focus solely on the result, and not on the means of achieving the result. While these types of programs can achieve results, they can also encourage bad behaviors that can do damage to the brand and hurt sales in the long run by creating unhappy customers who speak out on social media. It’s well known what some salespeople can do in narrowly focused programs – shift the timing of sales to maximize points, sell something a customer doesn’t want, push harder than is appropriate, make promises that can’t be kept, etc. It is unfortunate, but since the only program measure is the outcome, some salespeople do resort to such tactics!

For many years the incentive industry has extolled the importance of designing programs that not only address the results, but also the best ways to achieve them. The industry is full of research and papers from groups like Incentive Marketing Association, PPAI, SITE, Incentive Gift Card Council, Rewards and Recognition Network and the Incentive Research Foundation.  These organizations house a wealth of knowledge and have produced extensive research to help design incentive and recognition programs that will produce results.  Unfortunately these materials are almost never used.  Why?

In the high energy quick fix mentality of today’s business, people planning incentive programs are looking for a quick fix or a bright shiny object to motivate and often don’t want to hear about, let alone pay for, a program design process, even with the promise of better results or return-on-investment measurement. Many managers feel qualified to follow their own instincts. This often boils down to a determination that motivation is just a matter of dangling desirable carrots with perhaps a few unwritten threats thrown in for good measure. 

If you are interested in planning a sales incentive program we would advise you to engage the award companies who have the knowledge to help you make it successful. Award companies have knowledge to design programs based on accumulated best practices.  Just like the great mechanic, they not only know how to use a wrench, they know what nut to turn. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

How to Release the Drive to Innovate

Which reward system can you design and implement that will activate all four drives of human behavior?  

Believe it or not, the one program that will incorporate more of these drives to acquire, bond, innovate and defend is a company wide suggestion system.  No, not a traditional old box on the wall suggestion system, but a completely innovative approach to obtaining cost savings or revenue generating ideas you’re your employees. 

In the early 1980’s Maritz Motivation Solutions developed and patented a program called IdeaSystem.  It was a short term high intensity all employee suggestion program that garnered thousands of ideas from client companies which then rewarded employee teams with prizes when the ideas were accepted, evaluated and implemented.  These programs produced dramatic financial results for the sponsoring companies and provided tremendous employee engagement as well.

Here are just a few of the ways that these well designed suggestion systems incorporate the four drives of human behavior:

Drive to Acquire:  There are significant tangible and intangible awards offered to every employee from participation, to being on a team, to be on an evaluation committee, to formulating ideas and presenting them to management.

Drive to Bond:  Every employee has the opportunity to be involved in self formed teams that collaborate on a variety of revenue generation to cost saving ideas.  The interaction and cross functional entrepreneurship is significant.

Drive to Innovate:  Working with company material, and through relationships encouraged throughout the company, teams meet and formulate uncanny ideas that produce dynamic results.  It is innovation at its finest.

Drive to Defend:  A suggestion system of this nature reminds employees often of their importance to the organization’s mission and the dramatic financial results can provide the company with decided profit outcomes and competitive advantages.

With all the digital advances within the incentive industry today, we have the expertise to help design and coach a company through the process of developing a suggestion system of this nature and will be glad to assist at any level. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

How to Activate the Four Human Drives in a Recognition & Rewards System

According to Professors Nohria and Lawrence from Harvard Business School we are all motivated and guided by four drives: acquiring, bonding, learning, and defending. In a recent paper from the Incentive Research Federation, they discussed how you can activate these drives within a well-designed reward and recognition system. 

Some of the ways include:

Drive to Acquire

• Set clear with well-defined rewards for achieving them
• Train managers to recognize and reward positive behaviors aligned to performance
• Set high, yet realistic targets broken into sub-groups with awards for results
• Measure performance toward objectives and communicate progress to participants.
• Make recognition public where appropriate
• Provide rewards as close to achievement as possible
• Use spontaneous recognition spontaneous which is personal and heartfelt   
• Provide down time after long periods of extensive effort to achieve a goal
• Provide tangible rewards to supplement intangible recognition
• Provide group goals and celebrations

Drive to Bond

- Have employees create online profiles that are socially available for all to see

- Create randomized dyads of employees encouraging mutual-mentoring

- Ensure each instance of reward and recognition has a face-to-face element

Drive to Innovate

- Give all employees at least a small amount of time to innovate within their sphere of knowledge

- Ensure each instance of reward or recognition reinforces valued behavior 

- Encourage managers to have an “open door” to hear new ideas

Continue to encourage employees when an idea does not come to fruition

Drive to Defend

- Maintain openness and transparency in all communications regarding determination of all organizational incentive and rewards

- Gather employee input on incentive, reward, and recognition efforts to ensure they are perceived as fair

- Remind employees often of their importance to the organization’s mission

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

How to Design a Great Corporate Gift Program

Can you think of the perfect business gift?  If it is the perfect gift for you, will it be a perfect gift for others?  Have you ever received the perfect business gift?  When you receive gifts what do you do with them?  Put them on display, use them if they have utility value, put them in a drawer, consume them, immediately put it into the re-gift pile, or worse, give it to someone else, relegate it to the yard sale box, or worse yet just throw it away?

The problem is that giving a meaningful business thank you gift to an employee, a key vendor or a client, one that is truly appreciated, isn’t as easy as it may have been.  We’ve seen lots of them come and go over the years, some stay gone, some reappear after a time, some seem to be always likeable and come around every year.  Many just get set aside and forgotten, or worse

But it’s the thought that counts, right?  You get pluses for just giving the gift, regardless of how it is received by the recipient.  You hear about the ones they liked, not so much for the ones they didn’t.  Regardless, you got it done; it’s off the checklist until you have to go through it next year.  We’ve all been in that predicament; we all go through endless searching for just that one gift that will be a hit.  We all do because we want to thank our most valued people over the holidays.

After going through the process for over 40 years, I am convinced that you really can’t go wrong with what you choose use as a gift, (well, maybe some are ridiculous) as long as it is given with true appreciation and you show that appreciation in the quality (not necessarily high cost) communication, making it something personal, and giving a choice.

Believe it or not, according to Incentive Magazine, the largest singletype of business gifts by over 65% are gift cards, and of those, the most popular gift card systems that allow the recipient to choose from the hundreds of gift cards available in the country.  And as about 50% of the business gifts given are under $50, gift cards are ideal and very cost effective.

Just remember, that in business one thing has not changed: the value of recognition of people for a job well done. No matter how fast technology races us along, it will never replace good relationships. People will always remain the foundation of any successful business.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

How Neuroscience of Behavioral Economics Affects Employee Engagement

In a recent paper, researchers from the Incentive Industry Foundation suggest how behavior economics can help explain why some incentives are more effective than others and how program planners can strategically apply these principles to their own companies.

The white paper “Using Behavioral Economics Insights in Incentives, Rewards, and Recognition: The Neuroscience,”describes the behavior economic principles that connect emotions to performance. The research states that the majority of human decision-making is emotional as opposed to rational. While we were initially skeptical about this last statement, a complete review of the research makes it very understandable and eye-opening.

A completely oversimplified recap of the research would be to say that it proposes four drivers that complement our biological drives and regulate virtually everything happening in the workplace. And when you combine a good understanding and how all forms of awards are likely to affect these drives you will be in a position to build reward systems that can change employee engagement.

Over the years we have seen most of the research conducted by the Incentive Research Federation aiming to move incentive and recognition into the strategy sessions of the executive floor. Most fell short of this goal with little or no change in the reward industry, and as a matter of fact even some complacency currently exists.

This paper offers a concise guide to use applied behavioral economics in the recognition and reward industry, and will help you understand the reasons and motivations behind your employee’s actions and behaviors. By applying this guide to your everyday business life, we believe that you can make significant changes to your reward and recognition programs which will in turn make them more and more effective.

If you have an interest in making a change, a complete review of this paper will be very beneficial. We actually read it over a few times before concluding that this will go down as industry changing research if reward practitioners embrace the concepts and incorporate them into their programs.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Wellness Budgets Per Employee

When considering an incentive effort to drive employee wellness, one of the first decisions to make is how much to spend on each employee. There has never been any definitive analytical proof that will show you how much it will take to motivate someone to change behavior, or for that matter what award will induce the most excitement.  For years the incentive industry has provided guidelines to help you decide, and which award recommended will always be dependent on what the sales rep is selling.

A number of factors go into motivating behavior change.  And while one is the award itself, it is by no means the only one.  If you think by simply offering some type $50-$100 fitness device you are going to motivate an employee to change years of poor lifestyle choices then think again, it probably won’t.  But in combination with the other pieces of the wellness program (not the least of which is well designed communications) a choice of awards can be effective. 

Following is a chart published in Incentive magazine comparing how much budget companies invest, on average, per employees for their wellness programs.

Spend rate	2015	2016	Change
Under $50	42.8%	40.9%	-1.9%
$50 to $99	18.2%	26.3%	+7.8%
$100 to $199	10.2%	15.0%	+4.8%
$200 to $499	11.8%	5.1%	-6.7%
$500 to 999	11.2%	3.3%	-7.9%
$1000 and more	5.9%	9.5%	+306%

Almost 70% of companies researched use individual awards under $100.  A mistake often made in the planning phase is to only use an award in the fitness related field.  They may be good for introductory or communication reasons, but if you want to get the most motivation appeal out of your award budget.

Don’t give them what you want them to have or what you think they want, let them choose for themselves.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Potential Problems of Employee Engagement Programs

Employee Engagement can be a controversial topic mainly because it is hard to define and even harder to tie to business metrics and a quantifiable return on investment.

We often hear only the positives about employee engagement, and how it has become the Holy Grail within corporate America today.  In an article at ERE.net, John Sullivan PhD, an internationally known HR thought-leader, explored several insights into the problems concerning employee engagement programs.  If you want a better understanding of the pros and cons of this topic that seems to be on the top of most surveys that cover the concerns of the HR world today, you can download a copy of this paper here.  

Dr. Sullivan writes:

… there is far too little focus on the problems or issues related to engagement. … The process of gathering engagement data and the interpretation of it both improve dramatically when program managers and users are fully aware of all of its potential problems.”

Some of the employee engagement issues Dr. Sullivan gets into include:

• That “engagement may be a byproduct, not a cause;
• Engagement is not productivity or an output;
• Outside factors influence engagement;
• Diverse employees and different generations are engaged by different things;
• Managers and employees don’t understand engagement;
• The goals and metrics of engagement programs are often limited.
• Engagement is not productivity or an output 
• Engagement may be a byproduct not a cause;
• High levels of engagement may not prohibit turnover
• And many others 

The bottom line is; organizations are trying to manufacture engagement instead of figuring out what each employee's mind and heart are naturally engaged by.  It seems  the vast majority of organizations are afraid to ask, because they fear that it's not related to the business they're in.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Corporate Objectives Focus More on Engagement than Sales

Merchandise IQ Report 

An interesting fact was noted by the recent Incentive Magazine “2017 Merchandise IQ” research study.  9% of companies responded that they had decreased their budgets for brand named merchandise over the prior year.  In combination with a corresponding decrease of 5.3% last year, there has been almost a 15% decrease in this budget item over two years. 

Frankly, that is very disturbing to incentive merchandise manufacturers as this category of award has been the backbone of the industry for decades, and they have spent millions in advertising and promoting it.  By design it was also the single highest profit category of any award in the industry and if this trend continues, the manufacturers, their wholesalers, distributors and incentive companies will have to look for other ways to shore up their profits. 

So why is this happening?  Some feel that it is because of the shift of award budgets from growing sales to improving employee performance and building employee loyalty.  In addition, the emphasis that the human resource professionals have placed on employee engagement is starting to pay off.  Most believe (without much empirical evidence to support the conclusion) that improved employee engagement does result in incremental revenue and profit.

Unfortunately for some, the predominate award category in employee recognition efforts is gift cards…which for incentive companies are also the single lowest profit award category in the industry.  Correspondingly you can expect an increased effort on various pricing schemes for gift cards to improve their profitability. The ubiquitous “points” programs will be the most dominate scheme, so caution is advised to closely analyze the “points needed” for any gift card…usually an easy calculation as with gift cards the value is readily apparent.

Some questions and data from the “Merchandise IQ” that supports some of these conclusions are:

Audience	2016	2016
Consumers	52.6%	44.1%
Salespeople	50.2%	51.8%
Non Sales Personnel	37.7%	30.8%
Distributors/Dealers	14.5%	15.4%
Other	7.45%	14.7%

What Are the Top Five Objectives You Set for Using Awards?

Objective	2016	2015
Employee Recognition	58.0%	56.3%
Employee/Client Gifts	51.0%	35.9%
Employee Satisfaction	43.1%	36.6%
Build Customer Loyalty	40.1%	42.3%
Increase Sales	38.8%	47.2%

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net