Many contemporary organizations maintain lower payroll, training and turnover costs while helping to keep employees feeling more secure and less micromanaged in their positions as a result of utilizing a lean business paradigm. The cycle of hiring scores of people during prosperous times and then laying everyone off in not-so prosperous times has been replaced with a new model of conducting business. The key to this paradigm is to incentivize the employees that make up your workforce in an effort to maximize organizational potential. There are many ways that an employee award program can help a company reach its goals during any economic climate.
Both incentive and recognition programs provide economical options for organizations that focus on motivating employees with lifestyle merchandise rewards. Depending on the economic environment, managers can change the budget of the employee award program to accommodate for fluctuations in available funding.
I advise clients to budget their incentive awards program at minimum to include all employees and allow them to earn a gift from the lowest collection at least once every 30-60 days. This helps to keep employees interested in the incentive program because there is a reasonable lead time between when points are earned and when the person receives an award.
In more prosperous times, additional goals and points may be rolled out in an effort to beef up the incentive program. Especially for sales incentive programs, one can maximize profits with this kind of strategy while pulling back when the business cycle tops out.
When companies are looking for ways to cut costs due to poor economic conditions, investing in the capabilities of your employees may be the difference, as noted in the OnSite Events blog, between maximizing employee/organizational potential and crippling yourself in a competitive global market. Companies across the United States may feel forced to make cutbacks and limit pay increases, but giving in to this pressure may do more harm than good.
Savvy managers look for ways to engage and motivate employees even during times of economic uncertainty and many have subsequently decided to resolve this issue by implementing incentive programs. These managers have concluded what research by the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement confirms- incentives increase performance, help provide higher employee and customer satisfaction and improve overall financial performance. The same study found that implementing an employee award program helps companies to generate a shareholder return almost 40% higher than their competition. The results of starting an incentive program can create a sustainable competitive advantage for an organization whether the economy headed south or not.
Instituting an employee award program can help an organization reach its goals because these programs have flexible budgets that can be re-evaluated anytime and adapted for current funding. Reward programscan truly be the difference between business as usual and moving your business ahead of the competition in any economic climate.
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