Many companies are gearing up for the beginning of their fourth quarter, leaving managers with last minute projects and an extra workload. We prioritize these tasks and often put off planning employee incentives or recognition awards until another, less hectic day. Unfortunately sometimes that day never comes and in the meantime if it does, how much productivity is lost? By committing yourself to spend half an hour each day for a mere seven days, you can do what it takes to get an incentive program out of the idea stage and into a cornerstone of your corporate culture.
Days One and Two: Gather feedback/expectations, appoint [sub] administrator(s)
I think a great place to start is to schedule a meeting and invite attendees that will be helpful in thedecision making process as well as some employees who will be participants in the employee incentive program. This meeting should help to shed light on what the incentive program’s desired results/expectations will be, how to communicate the award program, how participants will interface with the program-online, print, meetings, training sessions, etc. In addition, [sub] administrator(s) that will be handling administrative functions of the incentive program should be appointed and included in this meeting.
Day Three: Estimate the annual award budget
Budgets are estimated by looking at the number of employees and the number of goals that you will be introducing. Usually my clients will break it down like this-we have 2,000 employees that we can safely spend about $25 on each month on each. By beginning with an estimated incentive award budget, when you get ready to lay out the goals later on, the point level assigned to each goal is then easier to figure mathematically.
Day Four: Schedule a realistic implementation date
Kicking off an incentive program at the beginning of the quarter or start of the New Year is quite often for many of my former new clients. For recognition events, these tend to be scheduled during a slow season or at the end of the year instead of having a holiday themed event.
Days Five and Six: Decide on specific goals (decrease collections over 90 days to >1%) and the associated award amount
To develop incentive program goals for your organization, I recommend three steps: break out your target audience(s), list out the areas you are looking to change and then ensure your goals are aligned with your overall business strategy. To read a full article on how to set up incentive program goals in three stepsplease read my past blog on this topic.
From the budget established in Day Two, you can take your list of goals and depending on how long it takes to achieve the goal you can deduce the point value that each goal should have.
Day Seven: Find an award partner/provider
Once you have completed the above steps you are now ready to find your partner in success-an award program provider, such as Awards Network, that is flexible enough to meet your needs and goals as previously defined. I would advise anyone looking for an award provider to use the following criteria to evaluate potential partners: company history/ profile, awards offered, level of administrative support available, cost proposal, references.
Once the program is taken to the third party provider, most of the work on the program is finished. From this point on, most of my clients are able to relax a little and just provide feedback on presentation materials or website design to get the program started. If a client is well prepared and has this to-do list completed when they join Awards Network, the kickoff date can be as a little as a few days and at the maximum a few weeks. Utilize these seven steps and start planning your 2009 employee award programtoday!
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