It happens time and time again. You work hard to create an incentive plan to help motivate your team. For the first few days or even weeks people are excited and the plan is working. But then people lose focus and the program goes flat. Does this sound familiar? It makes you stop believing in the power of incentive plans.
Well it doesn’t have to be this way! We find the right incentive plan with the right management can work brilliantly. Don’t abandon the incentive plan. Instead change your approach. Consistently, we find that people love to celebrate success. Incentive plans provide you that opportunity. Here are the top 5 reasons incentive plans fail:
- The reward is not motivating. You want your service team to account round and maybe you generously provide a commission for doing so. If you think through the plan, a CSR account rounds and adds an umbrella policy. You make $20 revenue on this sale. You give them half or $10. Now they have to wait potentially 4 weeks to get paid on it, after you get your commissions and then payroll is processed. Then taxes come into play and the end result is about $7.
- Attention is only paid to the incentive program when it launches. You may do a big meeting and tell everyone the great news. Then it’s never mentioned again. Your team will spend time on what they see you spending time on. You have to get the troops riled up! Talk about the program, roam around the office asking how its going. Give high fives when you hear about success.
- It’s not visual. Your program is hidden and not easily tracked. You have to make sure the program has some visual aspect. A tracking board always works. Make sure its front and center where everyone can see it. It needs to be in a place where all the staff can see it regularly.
- There is no end date. The best incentive programs have a conclusion. This means that everyone is focused on achieving something within a set amount of time. The conclusion can be either when a certain goal is hit or expires on a certain date.
- There is no goal. If you really want to get moving in the right direction, set individual and weekly team goals. This allows you to motivate the team in bite sized chunks. You will be surprised what you can accomplish when you set a goal!
It’s a new year which means you may have new incentive plans about to launch. Make sure you use these tips to keep them alive!
