In the last entry I spoke about how incentive program goals should be established in three steps and I would like to expand upon this topic to include examples. Since many of my companies have requested examples of specific objectives for specialized incentive programs we’ll take a look at some of the more popular examples but keep in mind that many clients opt to incorporate many of these goals in an overarching umbrella incentive program.
Sales incentive programs are very popular and are commonly used to help organizations reach and even exceed sales goals. Programs with this purpose will often reward individuals who reach sales goals for new products/promotions, increase new client acquisition rates and retention of current clients, win sales contests and improve sales in one period compared to another.
While increasing earnings with a sales incentive program is a direct way to boost profit, safety incentive programs are a way to reduce costs and impact the bottom line. It is important for employees to be aware of safety compliance issues in any workplace and many times safety related goals will be included in anumbrella incentive program. Goals of safety programs include increasing the number of people completing job hazard assessments, encouraging participation in safety committees, increasing submissions of safety suggestions, increasing the number of people who report near misses and encouraging the development of action plans to eliminate them, etc.
Another type of incentive program is customer service rewards programs. Employee incentive programs frequently are designed to encourage employees to consistently provide excellent customer service. Depending on whether employees encounter customers via phone, in person or via email, these goals will vary. Improving the wait time for customers, receiving excellent scores on random monitoring performed by management, increasing customer satisfaction survey scores, increasing perfect attendance rates and encouraging peer to peer recognition are all objectives that a customer service reward program may include.
In addition to specialized goals that are relevant to specific divisions of the organization, all divisions might also reward for a set of “core” employee incentive program goals that are relevant to everyone. Core goals popular in any type of incentive program include allowing for peer to peer and on-the-spot recognition, encouraging leadership and rewarding employee longevity.
Before rubber stamping the list of goals your organization is proposing, take one last look and ensure that the incentive program goals are aligned with overall business objectives. This last step will help to make sure that all of the goals of your incentive program are helping your organization to get where it wants to be. If anyone has a comment about incentive program goals or even an example of some of the goals they have added-I would love to hear back from readers. Please feel free to comment away!
Leave a Comment