“There’s a growing acceptance,” acknowledges Laura Schroeder, contributing author to the Compensation Cafe blog, “that one size no longer fits all when it comes to rewards.” Schroeder cites shrinking budgets to an emerging phenomenon of tailored award programs in which individuals are asked how they prefer to be rewarded and the organization designs an award program accordingly. This of course means that a reward program can end up being different things to different employees, or as Paul Herbert calls it a, “Goldilocks Incentive Program”. Many HR blogs are discussing this topic and from my research I have found four main components of a tailored award program that I would like to share with readers.
Gathering Employee Feedback
If you are regular reader, you have probably picked up on this point in previous blog posts but I really cannot overstate the importance and impact on an incentive program when you take the time to gather employee feedback and expectations prior to launching the reward program. There is really no other way to ensure that the incentive program will be relevant and rewarding to participants unless you keep records of employee preferences. Also note that what employees value and prefer changes over time and often depends on what stage in life a person is in, which is where the next two components come in.
Offering a Wide Variety of Award Merchandise
Incentive programs need to appeal to any demographic of participants you are looking to engage with. One of the best ways to have this appeal is to offer a wide variety of lifestyle rewards. If you have locations outside of the United States, you have the added concern of offering a variety of rewards that will be valued and usable in other countries as well. Partnering with an experienced award program provider will allow you to offer hundreds name brand rewards at a valuable cost. Trust industry experts to put togetheraward collections that contain lots of items and a wide variety of items; all of which are state of the art and modern.
Being Flexible
Recently I have received more emails from participants inquiring if their points can be saved, donated or even turned in for other reasons or opportunities. A couple of months ago, one of my clients with a service award program had a recipient who wanted two gifts instead of one but the cost of the two gifts was equal to the original award. All of these situations can be accommodated but it is really up to the organization to determine if points will expire, if people can donate their points to a co-worker, if rewards can be cashed in for vacation or logo’d merchandise and whether a person should be able to order the gift or gifts that he or she really wants. The bottom line is that what people find rewarding varies on a person to person basis and the more flexible you are, the better the incentive program will be at 1) engaging employees to reach goals and 2) maintaining its relevance to everyone in the company.
Changing Goals and Introducing Goals on the fly
Paul Hebert in his recent article on The Goldilocks Incentive Program, describes a sales situation in which product “A” has sold out and is now on back order. As a result, competition is offering a substitute to product “A” and so incentives are offered to sales people to connect with customers and make sure customers understand the differences in the two products and why it is worth the wait product “A”.
With an online incentive program, you have the ability to add, change or remove goals as needed. When incentive program goals have changed, email or other communications can be sent out immediately to notify participants. So in the case presented by Hebert, you could easily add the goal of keeping product “A” on order and communicate this with sales people right away.
In short, tailored reward programs are the exact opposite of a one size fits all reward. When you take the time to find out what employees want, offer a good variety of rewards, try to stay flexible and change goals on the fly, you will have a tailored incentive program that is sure to produce bottom line results.
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