Reward Items of No Value Get Thrown Away

This Delbert cartoon Adams raises a very appropriate discussion regarding employee recognition awards.  It is a debate that has been going on for years and years, and no doubt will continue for years and years.   

Why?  Because if you were to draw a straight line continuum to depict the awards industry, advertising specialty items would be on one end of the spectrum and strategic full service employee incentive and recognition programs that included research, training, communications, feedback, awards and analysis would be at the other.

The debate arises anywhere along that line where the advertising specialist sales folks think they carry the type of products that are appropriate as awards.  And they could be right, some of their items could be appropriate.  But unfortunately most don’t, and actually if you prefer to give your award winner a choice of what they can receive, many would choose another award.  But often clients don’t really want to give a choice.  They’ve chosen the item because it fits their need to communicate something; the theme, the company, the outcomes, the goals etc. 

So, when considering awards for your incentive or recognition program, think about this cartoon.  Will the items you choose eventually be thrown away and considered as something with little or no value?  Will they be relegated to the bottom desk drawer or the closet?  What are you trying to accomplish; motivate increased performance or simply communicate something. 

When your award backfires and your employees see relatively little value in it, it can do more harm than good.  Remember, the award categories termed advertising specialties do just that.  They advertise something. 

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

To Retain Your Best Employees – Train Your Managers

Research from just three years ago showed that:

 “half of employees who don't feel valued by their employer intend to look for a new job in the next year. Among those who feel valued, just 1 in 5 (21%) will send their resumes elsewhere.”

With labor market shrinking as it is today, that % may double.  While you are doing everything to find and hire new workers, you also need to do what’s necessary to retain your current ones.

Lots of studies show that employee recognition is one of the factors that will keep your employees from job hunting.  The first factor of course is pay and benefits, but when you reached the plateau on those and there’s not much more give in those budgets, you need to look at other ways to get things done.  Monetary compensation is not the only reason employees stay with a company.

Behavioral psychologists know that you appeal to a workers' sense of value when you reinforce their performance with positive consequences.  Employees that feel valued at work, tend to stay at work with that company. If it’s that easy, why do we constantly work with clients who are having problems with their current recognition efforts?  Could it be a simple matter of management training? 

According to David Ballard, PsyD, an assistant director of organizational excellence at the APA:

"Most managers and supervisors are never really trained to give effective recognition, and don't track the effectiveness of programs that they have in place.”  Managers need to be trained "in the basics of recognition and reward theory to make sure that recognition is closely tied to the behavior that they're trying to recognize and encourage."

No single reward strategy will appeal to all your employees.  Everyone has a unique way that they like to be recognized.  And the front line manager is the best suited to bring that recognition to the employee, to know what they want.  Once they know what their employee’s value, if they make it a priority to implement a reward system that addresses that value, you will get more of that type of performance. 

And, while you’re at it, you may want to institute a recognition system to reward those managers who are going the great job of recognizing their people. 

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

Employee Turnover and How to Win The War

According to a recent Forbes report the labor market is shrinking. There is already competition for top talent, and it appears this economic cycle will be here for a while:

“The headline report adds new jobs and subtracts quits, layoffs, retirements and other separations. The gross rate at which people are quitting is now three million people per month, twice what it was in the recession. And companies are trying to hire, both to replace quits and retirements and also to expand. Six million open positions show up in the official reports, and businesses would certainly hire even more if people were available. But this recent economic growth is not the whole story. The tight job market will continue for a decade or more.”

The impact is crippling for many employers. Josh Bersin estimates the total cost of losing an employee – which includes such factors as lost productivity, knowledge drain, and company morale – at a stunning 1.5 to 2.0 times the employee’s annual salary.

In addition, there is a longer hiring cycle.  At an average 27.6 business days per position, the lag time between posting new jobs and getting them filled is already well above pre-recession levels and approaching its highest mark since the turn of the century.

This new trend in unemployment will necessitate some new strategies including: 

Reassess your total compensation package — but not all compensation comes in the form of cash. Employee discount programs and other perks like flexible work hours can be inexpensive, and retooled recognition programs are yet effective ways to boost your overall benefits package.

Invest in people -- Job skills training, for example, not only pays off in overall productivity – lessening the need for additional FTEs – but individuals with career development opportunities report higher levels of overall job satisfaction. Supervisory training is a similarly critical piece of the puzzle, as more than half of U.S. workers have reported quitting a job to escape a bad manager.

Leverage technology to expand productivity -  computing power and technical innovation has led to an explosion of targeted, low-cost productivity apps for virtually every department within an organization.

Tap into global sources of labor - reach out to staffing organizations that specialize in international outsourcing. You may discover opportunities to test (even temporarily) the skills and quality of global talent for various positions at a relatively low cost.

Tap the power of your own employees – now is the time to implement an employee referral program that awards your employees for introducing a family member, friend or acquaintance to work for your company. 

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

Best Companies See More Value in Incentives

The 2017 Incentive Buyers Conference took a look at a research study of how much attention the best performing companies pay to their incentive, recognition and reward programs.

The research - "Things Top Performing 10 Businesses Do Differently in Recognition and Reward Programs" - showed quite clearly that the most successful firms view incentive programs as a strategic business advantage over average firms.

The IRF set out to look at what top performing companies do differently when it comes to their sales, channel, and employee reward and recognition programs. Instead of using a pre-set list like the Fortune 500, the IRF surveyed 400 companies and found 177 that met its definition of top performers: at least 5 percent annual growth in either revenue or stock price as well as 90 percent customer and employee satisfaction scores.

What the study found is that when it comes to non-cash reward and recognition programs, top performing companies do a lot of things differently, starting with how likely they are to use these incentive programs, and how important they feel those programs are to their success. Compared to average firms, top performing companies:

·       Use non-cash rewards and recognition in 90 percent of their sales programs compared to 75 percent of average firms

·       81 percent vs. 59 percent in channel sales

·       88 percent vs. 77 percent in employee loyalty and engagement programs

Highly successful companies are far more likely to have all of their programs organized under a single umbrella than average performers -- 350 percent more likely when it comes to sales incentives and 250 percent more for employee recognition programs. In addition they are substantially less likely to use service anniversary programs, with only 39 percent celebrating years of service, compared to 51 percent of average performing firms.

Another strategic difference is that the best companies are twice as likely to design their reward and recognition programs to have the broadest reach possible, with over half aiming to include as many employees as possible, not just the top performers. That's a tactic used by less than a third of average performing firms.

Clickhere for a copy of a whitepaper on this research.

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