23rd April 2009 - Incentive & Motivation

Creativity in your employee motivation strategy can have real impact on your organisation

Think of employee reward and recognition strategy and you may be forgiven for seeing no further than the use of incentive rewards to encourage staff to meet and exceed their sales targets. While the financial drive is certainly a significant aspect of incentive reward programmes, employee motivation strategy now covers a much broader range. This is because organisations are looking to encourage behaviour in their employees that will contribute to better business and money savings across all facets of an organisation, not just sales generation at the base level.

So how can organisations come to realise such improvements? It’s through reward and recognition that staff can he encouraged to change behaviour. And no time is more pertinent than now, when businesses must ensure that savings arc made at every opportunity.

One solution that has worked well at Michael C Fina and for many clients is to have a suggestions box for staff to put forward their ideas on how things could be improved within the business. Rewards are offered to an member of staff that makes a suggestion that is put in action.

An example that highlights the financial benefits of rewarding and recognising employees that make positive changes in the workplace is a solution called Workplace Recognition. We introduced this in line with the new Health and Safety Offences Bill, which came into effect at the beginning of 200l and has increased the maximum fine for minor breaches from £5,000 to £20,000. The solution is targeted at rewarding employees that put their health and safety lessons into practice. The effect is a reduction in accidents and costly mistakes and employee motivation is improved significantly by offering rewards for their health and safety compliance. This solution shifts focus from the negative — you will be fined and disciplined if you fail to comply — to the positive — you will be rewarded for making improvements.

We run another scheme for a large courier company. This aims to promote simple changes in staff behaviour that can lead to improved efficiency anti money savings. And what’s more, it’s all delivered in a staff-friendly manner. The implementation is via a points-based reward system in which all cornier drivers take part. Arriving ai work on time means staff accrue a point. Presentation throughout the day leads to another point. Points are also given for on-time deliveries, completed rounds without disturbance, positive feedback, new business leads or colleague recommendations.

At the end of each month the points are tallied and prizes are awarded. Going beyond the call of duty is about non-financially-motivated behaviour from staff. A highly effective method of encouraging good behaviour is through recognising their efforts and rewarding them, as they justly deserve.