Welcome to week four of our Talent Optimization series. This week we discuss how incentives help you Reward and Recognize your people. In many organizations reward is planned solely in alignment to organizational goals. It makes sense short-term, but focusing only on dollars will cost eventually. Because circumventing employee development guarantees future high-ticket hires. That is why Rewards and Talent Management professionals must be in lock-step to keep top talent.
Formal Incentives are not enough
Incentive programs are often tied to traditional Performance Management processes. They are the foundation of total rewards. After all, formal annual bonuses are a universal rite of passage. But copmensation is no longer enough.
Because we expect to be paid inline with the quality, and quantity, of work we do. That is implicit to the agreement we make when we accept a job. But when that is out of alignment people become disengaged. So, what can you do?
In a survey of the US Workforce by the American Psychological Association
Informal Incentives are necessary
Informal incentives are a practical approach to the challenge. There are countless ways to show appreciation. But these types of reward should be highly individualized. They need not cost a lot, but when delivered sincerely can improve performance and morale. Some ideas:
- Comp days for salaried employees
- Say “thank you” [in person, in front of others, in email]
- Say "thank you" via a public mention in a newsletter or professional social media like LinkedIn
- Write letters of appreciation, copy the employee’s file and leader(s)
- Lunch with a top department leader
- Invites to “higher-level” meetings
- Offer to be a mentor/find a mentor for the employee
- More frequently assign responsibilities the employee enjoys
- As possible, reassign work the employee does not enjoy
- Give the person more autonomy in how the work is completed
- Provide more resources for project development
- Supply opportunities for advanced training or conferences
- Allow virtual work and/or flexible work schedules
- Give tickets to local events, restaurants, or send a token to their home
Incentives must be aligned with desired behaviors
Delivering Incentives effectively
Situation-Behavior-Impact is a model often used for delivering feedback. It is also very effective when delivering rewards. To demonstrate, to effectively RECOGNIZE someone you will:
- Describe the Situation and exactly what was done well
Last Thursday, in the xxx meeting, when we were discussing the new product road-map… - Describe the specific behavior
…your insightful questions about the development process influenced the team to revise the beta testing. They will now include our team in redundancy reviews. - Describe how the Behavior helped the department, company, and/or customer
Your behavior reinforced our intention to partner with IT across the development cycle. You deepened trust by showing understanding and engagement.
It is the same when delivering a Reward. Although you many find the acronym moved around a bit…
- We are awarding you two comp days off. This is in appreciation for the significant extra effort you put in over the last month (behavior) to ensure we delivered our new product. You did an excellent job in spite of all of the last minute changes (situation) to get us to market on-time and under budget (impact).
These are some ideas to get you started when considering your Reward and Recognition programs. Get in touch and we would be happy to help you fully align them to your overall talent optimization. Then you will be in the best position to attract, hire, and keep top performers. Come back next week when we close this series with how Performance Management fits in to your best people strategy.