According to a recent article from the
RewardsRecognitionNetwork.com, nearly all attendees at the recent RRN Expo in
Chicago agreed that most recognition programs fail to conform to the best
practices revealed by almost 20 years of research from dozens of independent
sources.
Since the 1970s and 1980s the
Incentive Research Foundation and the Incentive Marketing Association have done
a wide variety of studies on the effectiveness of properly designed recognition
systems. It appears most companies
aren’t listening! They have seemed to ignore
the fundamental principles of effective design for these programs. Why?
Unfortunately, there is no way for RRN
to obtain accurate data on this conclusion as most companies don’t publish
their program design and most suppliers of these programs don’t either. The evidence to support this conclusion came
from “discussions with many incentive, recognition and loyalty company
principals and their corporate clients, and reviewing the incentive,
recognition, loyalty and promotional programs prevalent in the marketplace.”
The two main culprits of this poor
design that fly in the face of the research include:
- Focusing on only the 20% of participants to drive performance rather than the middle 60% of the organization
- Failing to integrate the many parts of engagement to actual behaviors and performance outcomes
Having sold in this industry for many
years, we might add a couple more:
- Poor industry training for companies to truly understand incentives
- Poorly educated industry salesforce who almost always take the path of least resistance in order to make the sale
- Competing vendors in the engagement industry are all vying for the same budget dollars diluting the message in favor of their own deliverable
- The recognition industry as well as clients chase the short term, quick fix profit goals ignoring more expensive designs that can lead to potentially greater long term results.
Where actual hard dollar corporate
investment is concerned, companies don’t feel the outcomes of engagement
efforts can be accurately measured. And
that has been the problem for the recognition industry since inception. Truth is that it can’t, there are just too
many variables to definitively show management what they actually receive in
terms of bottom line results from recognition.
It’s a soft dollar discussion.
This situation is not new. Over 25 years ago the Industry Research
Foundation did a study with the American Productivity and Quality Center that provided
the best template for effective program design.
In that study there was a very enlightening yet relatively obscure fact
that the overwhelming majority of clients were not using their vendors for
anything but the fulfillment of awards; not measurement; not design; not
analytics; not communications. It would
appear that not much has changed in the last 25 years.
Ultimate Choice contains leadership
who has combined incentive & recognition experience approaching 100
years. We also sell the single most
sought after award in the industry….GIFT CARDS.
And will still provide at no charge the expertise to help you design
programs that will conform to the best practices to help make them as
successful as possible.
For more information on
Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please
contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net
