I was recently talking with the HR Director of a leading Australian Insurance firm - you know, one of those which is currently either owned, part owned, about to be bought out or merged, and it was little wonder that she told me staff chats around the kitchen area have deferred to an hourly stock watch on their company’s performance and what it meant to their job.

A slip in staff morale and confidence in these tough economic times is starting to bite and will no doubt impact on an organisation’s productivity in the year ahead.

Managers and Executives have a corporate responsibility to strategically manage their staff through these times, ensuring that they are honoured and respected for the job they do. But this must be more than words. Leaders must embrace the culture of recognition from the top down.

Staff will sense a genuine effort by management to buy into a reward and recognition program and respond accordingly. They can also smell a false attempt a mile away!

I encourage organisations to formalise recognition awards, maintain staff training programs and create new and dynamic ways of communicating this so that staff morale remains high through these uncertain times and productivity does not waiver.

More can be read on this subject through an article I found online:

Incentive Magazine Newsletter – October 22. 2008
Recognition for the real world - By Jeanie Casison

Working in a call centre is hard work. I should know after cold calling tens of thousands of NSW residents in an attempt to sell them a AU$50.00 Teddy Bear for Care Flight. Sure, helping a good cause or charity gives you warm fuzzy feeling but at the end of the day a Telemarketers job can be a thankless and repetitive one. Like any other industry the staff need to be recognised, rewarded and supported by their managers to keep them going.

I was fortunate enough to work for a business that had an incentive program already in place when I started my short lived (8month) telemarketing career. As a naturally competitive person, I rose to the top of a team of 40 telemarketers in a few weeks and set all kinds of new records taking the hard to achieve target of 3 teddy bears per hour to over 7.

Best of all for me was winning one of the incentive rewards on offer each month - I usually went for the weekend for two at a luxury hotel.

How to reduce a telemarketing companys turnover and absenteeism, Dave Powell - October 7, 2008

Since the incentive expo at Darling Harbour we have received a lot of comments asking why we were giving out juggling balls.

Learning to juggle is all about changing behaviours. Juggling helps people gain insight into how they approach change and how willing they are to learn new skills. Juggling can also help to achieve a shift in beliefs and the creation of small steps towards working and thinking differently.

Here are some great reasons to teach your employees to juggle.

Confidence
Juggling improves confidence, because most people will find that they can do something that they previously thought was ‘impossible’. Once the impossible for them has been achieved, they can then have a different outlook on life where suddenly things are much more achievable!

Persistence + Perseverance
When you juggle, you inevitably drop. The employee will move past these drops by persevering with the tricks they are working on until they conquer it. All of a sudden, drops/mistakes don’t matter. They are just a stepping stone to success!

Problem Solving
Juggling is about learning how to break each juggling trick down into its small component parts, learn each of the parts, then learn how to combine each part to form the trick. If they get stuck at any particular point in juggling, they can guarantee that someone more experienced will be able to offer advice to help further.

Balance
Balance is important in many areas of life, whether you are balancing priorities or trying to find a balance between extremes. You can balance both sides of your brain because you tend to learn how to juggle using one side of the brain, and when you get used to the pattern it switches to the other side of the brain. Your body and mind have to work in balance with each other to make the moves possible.

Stress Reliever
You reduce stress because in order to give your attention to juggling and learning, you need to put your concerns to one side and focus fully! Juggling encourages a mental and physical state known as ‘relaxed concentration’ in which the mind and body are able to be focused and alert while remaining calm and relaxed. You can sometimes find that the answer to your problems is much easier to find once you have finished the juggling and your mind is feeling refreshed!

“Anyone can juggle, not everyone believes they can.”

In part 1 of this series we looked at what the business wants to achieve. The first question that a business should ask – what is the behaviour change that needs to be effected to achieve the business objective?

In part 2, we looked at implementing a program to a measured process – bearing in mind that what gets measured can be improved.

Part 3 reviewed the 3 main types (of many styles) of programs that we work from when designing an incentive program – Win, Place, Show; Hit the Target; Redeem at any Time.

Today we will touch lightly on measurement/result conversion. This is a confusing/road block issue to many of the people I speak to regarding incentive programs. At design phase of an incentive program we address this once the objective has been decided and what process is being measured – and the appropriate type of program is applied to suit.

Conversion of measurement/results is handled by spreadsheets, logarithms or programs but the basis/formula needs to be established. Simple examples may be:

What is an X% increase in the production of widgets worth to the company?
What percentage of that worth is to be apportioned to the widget maker/s? (there are common benchmarks for this)
Will this apportion motivate the widget maker/s to change behaviour and increase performance? (You can see how crucial this point is)
Will this basis/formula achieve the objective?
What is the ROI? (Return on Investment)

As I mentioned earlier in this series, Motive8 sits down with clients at design phase and examines such issues to ensure that a workable program is designed so that objectives can be achieved.

There are some excellent articles by Paul Hebert of Incentive Intelligence blog that will also help readers with this subject. In particular, “Determining How to Spend your Budget” and “Program Budgets”.

In Part 2, we looked at different points a business should look at, or questions the business should ask, before the search for an incentive program begins. Today here are examples of what different programs are available.

Different Types of programs
There are 3 main types of incentive programs that are used to change the behaviour of participants. They are:

Win, Place or Show

• Singles out top performers
  (The top 10 sales performers or the 10 people that improved the most)
• Client chooses the number of positions to be claimed and the reward for each position
• Redeem rewards at program end

Hit the Target

• Rewards participants that achieve a predetermined level of performance
• Plateau variation with different reward levels changing at each increment
  (Plateau variation motivates participants to push a little harder as they close in on the next level)
• Redeem rewards at program end

Redeem at Any Time

• Rewards participants for tasks completed
  (Points are rewarded as each task is completed and participants can redeem at any time during the program)
• Minimum redemption levels can be designed into the program
• Redeem at Any Time

When we design a program at Motive8 it will be based on one of these main types – but can also be customised to the client’s requirements and/or objectives. (There are as many variations on these 3, as there are as many programs designed for different objectives.)

As mentioned in part 2 of this series, Motive8 sits down with the client at design phase to ensure that the required workable program is implemented.

Last week we looked at the first consideration of a business in implementing an incentive program – what objective does the business want to achieve?

This week (and referring in part to this post on 10 August 2007) we will drill down a little further.

What gets measured can be improved, or, an incentive program can improve any measurable process.

These adages apply to incentive programs. The performance of what is currently being measured in a business – Sales, Customer Visits or Business Reports, for example, can all be improved with the implementation of an incentive program. There is a myriad of different processes/functions/systems in any business that need to be measured for the business to function. If there is a process that is not being measured and the business wants to implement an incentive program to improve it – start measuring now.

Measurement example:

Sales staff currently making 15 Customer calls per week – implement a program that motivates the staff to increase the number of calls to 20, a 33pct increase which is rewarded with an incentive. (Either measured or rewarded in increments or when the goal of 20 is reached. This type of program can be magnified further – rewarding staff for taking the planned cognitive steps through the sales process, but more of that on another day.)

When sitting down with clients at design phase we examine measurement thoroughly:

• To ensure that the client achieves the results
• To ensure that the program is workable and offers ROI
• To ensure that the program will engage the participants

There are some important points that need to be considered when a business is contemplating an incentive program. Over the coming weeks I will publish some ideas and thoughts that should be noted when looking at incentive programs and a little education that may help in the decision making process.

What does the business want to achieve?

Overall, incentive programs motivate participants to change behaviour. An incentive program that is implemented is designed to change the behaviour, for example, of:

• Sales staff – motivating salespeople with incentives to drive their sales performance
• Customers – using an incentive to motivate your Customers to return to your business
• Employees – motivate the employees to change their behaviour/attitude/process within the business, using an incentive as a reward for their change.

There are many different behaviours/processes/systems that an incentive program can be applied to. Think about these: call centre performance, shop floor safety, efficiency in non-billed hours, product awareness by distributors, customer service processes, managing change in Company policy/direction, production line output, quality control…the list can go on.

There is a lot of detail and ideas on Motive8 or you can call any of the team here on 1300 559 904

One of our key catch cries that you will hear on this blog is that incentive programs are about changing behaviours.

We have just launched a Motive8 program specifically designed to change a behaviour. The program is small for just 13 participants however their role is critical to the long term viability of the company.

The 13 participants are employed in the company’s call centre and responsible for handling for enquiries for an Australian wide operation. The company has just merged separate databases into one and the call centre employees are required to cleanse their data and complete a customer contact form after each contact.

The incentive has been designed to promote repetition in completing the entire form, not just some of it and to make completing the form a key focus of their role with the new database requirements. The incentive focus is to change behaviour so every time they touch a customer a form is fully completed.

We know the key to making the incentive meaningful to the call centre employees, and thus successful is communicating how important their role is to the company, the value of the data they are collecting and how the data is used to support the marketing activity both short and long term. This has been reflected in the incentive communications.

The rewards are based on an individual and team based. Rewards are structured at different tiers for individuals based on the number of customer contact forms completed. The main reward is team based and they all must achieve the target to be rewarded. This will encourage team members to support each other and influence each others’ behaviour to receive the reward.

The program will trial for two months so we can measure a shift in behaviour and make program adjustments if necessary.