Q & A's on Why Incentives are Important

• What is the best way to motivate employees?
• How do I motivate my employees to change behaviour?
• Why does my business need an incentive program?
• I pay my employees well to work, why do they need incentives?
• If incentive programs boost profits, drive sales and increase employee satisfaction, why doesn't everyone offer them?
• Why do I need to offer them rewards? Isn't cash better?
• What are lifestyle rewards and why are they better motivators?
• Why does the Motive8 catalogue offer so many lifestyle rewards?
• Why Motive8?

Q. What is the best way to motivate my employees?

A. Ensure that positive reinforcement occurs for the desired behaviour, at the necessary frequency and is available for all employees.  Positive reinforcement sustains desired behavior over the longest period of time. 

Incentive programs are a great tool for positively reinforcing the desired behaviour.


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Q. How do I motivate employees to change behaviour?

A. Changing behaviours is about getting employees to produce desirable results through right behaviours.  The key principle in changing employees’ behaviour is that you can’t change it for them; they must change it themselves.   With this in mind, you can motivate employees to change their behavior by:
• The behaviour must be specific and easy to understand
• The behaviour must be easy to measure accurately
Communicating the behaviour you want
• Making sure your employees understand what the specific behaviour is and the benefits of mastering the behavior.
• Tracking the behaviour - accurate tracking motivates people to do better
• Reinforce the desired behaviour.  With reinforcement, the employee will adopt the new behaviour. Without it, the past behaviour will return.

By implementing an incentive program you can promote the use of the right behaviour by communicating the behaviour you want to change, measure, track and analyse the behaviour and reinforce by rewarding the behaviour.
 

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Q. Why does my business need an incentive program?

A. A survey of 1,500 Australian employees reveal that only 18% are actively engaged with their employer. That means a staggering 82% are ‘unengaged’ and they are working at the company, not for the company. 20% of this unengaged are ‘actively dis-engaged’ and are planning to leave their employer within 12 months.  A successful incentive program can help reverse this trend and combat lost revenue.

Another study by The Incentive Research Foundation, showed that incentive programs  increase work performance by an average of 22%.  There are few other methods available to increase a business’s performance by such a margin and result in engaged employees.

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Q. I pay my employees well to work, why do they need incentives?

A. Many business think the salary employees earn is enough of a monetary incentive to keep their workers happy and motivated. In reality, giving employees a salary usually inspires little more than average performance.

Employees are paid the same whether the business does well or does poorly. To them, there is no incentive for going that extra mile with customers and no sense of teamwork if the business performs beyond expectations.

An incentive, on the other hand, is something that incites or has a tendency to incite someone to action. The use of incentives recognises and rewards for above-average performance or a special achievement.

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Q. If incentive programs can help boost profits, drive sales and increase employee satisfaction, why doesn't everyone offer them?

A. Most businesses think incentive programs are just too costly or difficult to manage. Motive8 has been designed to with these two aspects in mind now making it easier for you to run an incentive program.

As an online program Motive8 will save you money and time while allowing greater control.  Promotional and administration materials required for the program are delivered as frequently as you need to an unlimited number of people through the website and emails reducing the need for traditional printed matter.  With an online catalogue reward items can be quickly added depending on participants taste making the program as compelling as possible.

Greater control means you also have instant access to analysis of performances, trends and circumstances and the ability to quickly revise program parameters if the performance is not reporting at anticipated levels.  There is also less confusion by giving all participants a central resource for finding program details and rules and seeing up to date results.  Participants are able to track their own redemptions eliminating the need for traditional customer service. 

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Q. Why do I need to offer them rewards? Isn’t cash better?

A. Cash in not an effective way of keeping employees motivated.  Using cash as a reward is often thought of as a salary bonus and is spent on necessities.  Wirthlin Worldwide research posed the question “How did you spend your last cash reward?  29% of respondents paid bills, 18% didn’t remember, 15% said they never received cash, 11% purchased gifts for family, 11% brought household items and another 11% put the money in savings.

Cash has a face value which cannot be hidden.  The recipient knows exactly in dollars and cents what value you place on them or their achievement. It's an unemotional reward.

While most people will state a strong preference for cash, what they say and what they actually work hardest to receive does not always match up. Research has shown they will be more motivated to perform better if they are working towards a lifestyle reward they would normally not purchase for themselves.

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Q. What are lifestyle rewards and why are they better motivators?

A. Rewards have a direct impact on the participant’s motivation.  Lifestyle rewards can be characterised as memorable, aspirational, reinforces the effort, generate hype and buzz and answers the basic instinct of wanting what one does not have. 

Lifestyle rewards are more motivating because they are psychologically more valuable than their retail value and fulfill the need for a pleasurable/memorable experience by solving  the indulgence guilt problem of purchasing an item they would not normally buy for themselves.  They offer bragging rights to family and friends and are more satisfying long term.   The memory of lifestyle rewards will also be linked to the provider of the reward.

An incentive program is likely to receive more buy-in from the participants if lifestyle rewards are offered.

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Q. Why does the Motive8 catalogue offer so many lifestyle reward options?

A. People attach more value to a reward they find personally meaningful versus one that is selected for them. Employee loyalty increases if they are able to choose rewards that were personally relevant. In other words, it is important to give participants the opportunity to choose because, given that opportunity, they can be expected to work harder and bond more closely with the your company and objectives.

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Q. Why Motive8?

A. Motive8 has been specifically developed for the SME market by its parent company AD+INC. Its experience in creating, tailoring and implementing incentive programs for large multinationals since 1999 identified there was a need for an incentive solution that SME's could afford that its large cousins had been prospering from for many years.