Once you’ve decided you want to implement an incentive program, you’ll want to choose a goal. A good goal for an incentive program should be specific, measurable, reasonably attainable, and in line with the incentive being offered. If the goal will be difficult to achieve or will earn—or save—the company a huge sum of money, consider spending some of those funds to opt for a more lavish incentive: your employees will work harder if they see signs that their company appreciates that effort.
Financial Incentive Program Goals
Increase Sales and Meet Sales Goals
Probably the most well-known incentive program goal is “increase sales by X%,” and there’s a good reason for that—incentivizing people to go above and beyond gives them a more tangible reason to do so than merely for the joy of doing a job well done. This goal is best implemented if you already have a well-functioning team, and setting the goal as a company-wide metric instead of just rewarding individuals; you want to foster a spirit of cooperation, not cut-throat competition.
Save Money By Implementing Efficient Procedures
Has your company found a new, more efficient procedure they want to use? Introducing it as the goal of a new incentive program can lead to more consistent usage than if it was just added to the manual. Turn the training session into an incentive program presentation and get everyone excited about the new procedure!
Improve Employee Productivity
Similar to introducing a more efficient procedure, improving productivity will have a higher adoption rate and its effects will last longer if there’s a tangible reward involved. The idea is to get workers used to doing something a certain way to meet a goal so that once the goal is achieved, they’re more likely to continue with the new way of doing things because they see the benefit from the new standard operating procedure. To do this, make sure the time frame to meet the goal is at least two weeks long since that’s the minimum amount of time the average person needs to repeat aa action to successfully form a habit for the long-term.
Non-Financial Incentive Program Goals
Build Employee Morale
Increasing employee morale can be a difficult thing to do, and it’s not exactly something you can convince people to practice by offering an incentive. To reach this goal, we recommend developing an incentive program for your managers or supervisors that oversee staff, give them the tools to effectively coach their people and the power to make little changes that will mean a lot to their staff, and then reward them based on the improvement you see. This can be done by surveying the managers’ staff or by observing how they interact together before and after the incentive program is done.
Teambuilding
In a previous post, we talked about employee team-building: how the most important aspect of successful team-building is about pursuing a common goal in a collaborative way. We’re not suggesting that you give employees an incentive trip as a reward for successful teambuilding, we’re suggesting that you consider an incentive trip as a way to encourage teambuilding after having already achieved the goal required to earn the incentive trip. Teambuilding opportunities can be added to any incentive trip, and even just going on the trip together will help your workers form bonds and grow stronger as a team!
Once you have a goal in mind and a process to follow for implementing your incentive program, your next step is choosing an incentive—and that’s where we come in! Contact MTI Events to discuss our different travel and event packages to reward your employees for meeting your incentive plan goals.
