If you’re planning to set up a program that advertises incentives to your employees, rather than one in which you choose to give rewards as you see fit, then you’ll need to spend some time thinking it through and setting clear guidelines up front. This will eliminate the illusion of unfair giving or favoritism among your employees. To get started, you need to:
Determine which areas of employee performance you want to reward.
Outline the objectives you want to achieve.
State the criteria for meeting those objectives. For example, what do you want your employees to do to earn these incentives? Be clear, and make the rewards and qualifications memorable. You want employees to keep the incentives on their mind at all times to encourage good behavior and exceptional service to your company.
Make sure your program initiatives will produce measurable results that directly affect the bottom line. You want to encourage results that benefit your company, whether it’s rewarding employees for selling more, working more safely, being more productive, treating customers better—whatever it takes to increase business.
Link all elements of an employee incentive program to the achievement of specific and clearly defined goals.
Develop the award structure. For example, are there different incentive levels in your program? Will you reward everyone who reaches a certain goal, or will you set different levels and offer commensurate rewards?
Choose the type of reward for each level.
Get all management on board with the program. It’s essential that everyone buys into the idea of rewarding employees for the items you outline. You’ll have problems if one manager chooses not to recognize employees while everyone else is working toward a goal.