According to the September 2021 issue of Sales and Marketing Management, using money as an incentive award doesn’t always change everything. In fact, it may not change much of anything accept spending more and not achieving your goals.
For as long as
we have been in the employee awards industry there has always been a blurred
line between using cash and non-cash to improve performance. To be overly simplistic, the easiest way to
consider the two methods is in relation to what you are trying to
accomplish. Cash is part of the contract
you use to hire and retain your employees.
It brings them to work, but it doesn’t necessarily motivate them to
perform at the high level you want them to.
Non cash is more often than not used for achieving specific objectives
with clear start and stop timing and sound measurement and feedback of that
objective. One of the biggest reasons
that cash is also used in these kinds of programs is for ease of administration…all
you have to do is just add some money to the paycheck. Right?
Recently we had
a potential client that had been using non-cash awards to reward employees but moved
that budget to cash after a survey of employees found cash is what they
wanted. Frankly if you ask any employee
group what they want for a reward they will universally say cash. Unfortunately, when companies make that
change, they rarely do any kind of measurement at the end of the reward program
period to see if the change had any meaningful effect on the outcomes. Worse, the extra cash in the paychecks will get
lost in income and provide little if any motivational or lasting trophy value. Over time it will just be considered as expected
compensation and be very difficult stop.
You will assuredly end up
spending more money on awards using cash than using non-cash. In addition, the White Conference on
Productivity showed conclusively that it took $3 in cash to produce the same
results as $1 in non-cash. Many clients
tell us they wish they had never gone to cash rewards in the first place.
Why
consider using non-cash rewards as the best recognition for stellar work:
·
The
perceived value of non-cash rewards tends to be significantly higher than the
actual cost.
·
They
make it easier for workers to celebrate each other’s success and talk about how
they were rewarded.
·
Millennials
and GenXers particularly appreciate non-cash rewards, especially for unique
experiences.
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