Is this an idea of Employee of The Week?

Does it really pays being Wally? What is stopping your employees from doing their level best?

STICKY REWARDS OR SLIPPERY REWARDS?

Why do noncash rewards motivate better than cash?

In today's business environment, two types of rewards exist - "sticky" and "slippery." Sticky rewards are memorable or, in other words, they "stick" in the recipient's mind and reinforce the relationship between the reward earner and the reward provider.

Slippery rewards, on the other hand, have a fleeting impact and often "slip" the recipient's mind. Cash - unfortunately for those companies that attempt to motivate employees and distribution partners using this commodity - is the most "slippery" type of reward because it's typically confused with other compensation and therefore forgotten.

That said, let us recap additional reasons why "sticky" noncash rewards motivate individuals to higher levels of performance than "slippery" cash rewards ...

Noncash rewards have significant "trophy value"
Non Cash Rewards	Cash Rewards
Provide tangible symbol of achievement	Intangible … disappear into wallet
Provide something physical to show off	Difficult to show off to friends, etc.
Provide lasting reminder of achievement	Recipients often can't recall what they purchased with cash reward
Are socially acceptable to "brag" about	Boorish to brag about
Reinforce association with sponsor company	Minimal association with sponsor company company due to minimal trophy value of reward

Noncash rewards fulfill recipient needs
Non Cash Rewards	Cash Rewards
Appeal to recipient's need for psychic income (social acceptance, increased self- esteem, self-realization)	Used to satisfy basic needs (car payments, groceries, etc.)
Provide guilt-free enjoyment of reward	Participant feels guilty for not spending award on necessities

Noncash rewards provide opportunities for effective promotions
Non Cash Rewards	Cash Rewards
Provide strong emotional appeal to participants' personal wants and interests	No "warm fuzzies" attached to cold currency
Deliver a higher perceived value; actual dollar value becomes secondary	A dollar is a dollar; participant attaches no greater emotional or aspirational value to cash

Oprah : Thank you for their hard work and dedication!

What type of incentive will excite your employees and gain their loyalty?

Oprah had a surprise for the 276 members of her studio audience when she opened the latest season of her daytime talk show  — she gave them all new cars. 

Human Resource - On Compensation and Incentives

Tips to make your employee incentive programs work

Employee incentive programs can do wonders for any company, but they have to be used right in order to be effective. Some companies have tried to use these incentive programs but they have found them to be ineffective, mainly because they did not take enough time to create a good program that worked well with their employees. When you start a good incentive program for your employees, you want to make sure that you relate all of it with the company and how it works. So, here are a few tips that can help you make sure that your employee incentive programs really work well.

Tip #1 - Have Goals for Employees

First of all, if you want to make sure that your employee incentive programs really work, it is important that you come up with goals for your employees. Make sure that you look at your mission statement and goals for your company. Remember, rewarding your employees is not just about making more profit. Make sure that you let your employees know that it is more than just about making money, but by making sure that they are cooperative and work well with the company as well. Make these goals for your employees and then you can reward them with incentives when they do well. Don't make the mistake of just rewarding for productivity and profit.

Tip #2 - Make Incentives Exciting and Worth Working For

Of course if you are trying to make sure that your employee incentive program is going to work, it is important that you make sure that you have incentives that are exciting and worth working hard for as well. Make sure that you make the incentives sound like they are very exciting, just as you would when you are advertising a product. While the incentives alone are very powerful, making them sound tantalizing can do wonders for making your program work as it should. Of course the incentives should be attainable as well. If employees don't feel that they can work to actually get an incentive, they may give up and you won't get the results that you really want.

Tip #3 - Provide Employees with Options

Providing your employees with options is a great idea as well when you are trying to make sure that you come up with employee incentive programs that work. Make sure that the program is flexible and come up with some different options. Remember, everyone is different and some employees may have different priorities and ideas than others do, so make sure that your program has a variety of different options.

Tip #4 - Turn Winners into Program Models

Once you get some winners using your employee incentive programs, take those winners and turn them into program models. Be sure to make it a public event when you give out the incentive and take pictures and really celebrate. You want the other employees to see how thrilled the winners are so they will be motivated to start working harder to achieve the incentives as well.

Marketing Tips : Creating a Sales Pitch for a Product

Social Media Marketing VS Traditional Marketing

I came across this article on why businesses especially SMEs should invest time doing online marketing. A very good insights of social media marketing. As all of us are aware, the way of doing marketing is definately changing towards the betterment of business owners. 

Over the past years, marketing has changed from outbound to inbound, from push to pull, from monologue to dialogue. A Report: Trust in Advertising”(Oct 2007) by Nielsen reveals a dramatic shift in consumer behavior. Some interesting findings from this report are:

No To Traditional Media	Yes To Social Media
18% of TV adv generates positive ROI	34% post opinions on social media
90% of people skip TV ads	36% think more positively about companies that have a social media presence
14% of people trusts advertisements
78% trust other consumers’ recommendations	32% trust other social media users’ opinions

Social Media is fast gaining popularity and is many ways are more influential than traditional media. The role of offline traditional media such as newspaper, TV, radio, SMS broadcast and business networking is rapidly replaced by online social media equivalents such as Blogs, YouTube, Podcasts, Twitter and Facebook.

With internet, everyone can now start their own online newspaper (Blog), TV channels, (YouTube),radio stations (Podcast), SMS broadcasting (Twitter) and business networking group (Facebook), sharing  whatever content they like, to their own target market!

The low cost, wide reach, ease –of-use- and speed of implementation of these social media platforms level is the playing field for SMEs to reach huge numbers of prospects effectively, something that usually would be prohibitively costly for many SMEs to do using traditional media.

It is not uncommon to spend RM4,000 for a 3- column newspaper advertisement, only to get less than 20 inquiries, That’s a cost per inquiry of RM200. Neither is the RM20,000 per month billboard along North-South highway nor the RM250,000 TV advertisement is going to yield a lower cost per inquiry.

The truth of the matter is, with social media, consumers are empowered with the ability to choose what to read, what to watch, what to listen to and who to communicate with. We can see that consumers are saying No to interruptive, one directional push marketing and saying YES to permission-based, bi-directional pull marketing. 

Modern consumers like to research information themselves using search engines and then make buying decision based on either opinion they hear from social media sites or friends’ referral. Whichever case, social media is not a fad, rather it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

Social media is about Content, Conversation and Community. You can get the word out at faster speeds, at a lower cost than offline traditional media. 

It’s really about leveraging on all those online social media platforms to help spread about your business by Sharing Content, engaging in Conversation and building Communities!

The Idea of Branding

I particularly like Tony's idea of branding- how branding are suppose to be started internally and to get the staffs to buy into the idea first before going out to the world. Logically speaking, we must make sure that the culture and the idea of business is fully personified by the business owners and staffs. And he gives high importance to culture of the organization. Most businesses with good potential struggles to make it big because of lack of culture and it was never given importance. A slight can in that attitude and giving priority to the culture of the people and organization will definitely produce results.
I like the idea of dressing down though!