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.