Establishing Incentive Program Goals in Three Easy Steps: Part 2

In the last entry I spoke about how incentive program goals should be established in three steps and I would like to expand upon this topic to include examples. Since many of clients have requested specific examples of objectives for specialized incentive programs, we'll take a look at some of the more popular examples. Keep in mind that many of my clients opt to incorporate these diverse goals in an overarching umbrella online incentive program.

Sales incentive programs are very popular and are commonly used to help organizations reach and even exceed sales goals. Programs with this purpose will often reward individuals who reach sales goals for new products/promotions, increase new client acquisition rates and retention of current clients, win sales contests and improve sales in one period compared to another.

While increasing earnings with a sales incentive program is a direct way to boost profit, safety incentive programs are a way to reduce costs and impact the bottom line. It is important for employees to be aware of safety compliance issues in any workplace and many times safety related goals will be included in an umbrella incentive program. Goals of safety programs include increasing the number of people completing job hazard assessments, encouraging participation in safety committees, increasing submissions of safety suggestions, increasing the number of people who report near misses and encouraging the development of action plans to eliminate them, etc.

Another type of incentive program is customer service rewards programs. Incentive programs frequently are designed to encourage employees to consistently provide excellent customer service. Depending on whether employees encounter customers via phone, in person or via email, these goals will vary. Improving the wait time for customers, receiving excellent scores on random monitoring performed by management, increasing customer satisfaction survey scores, increasing perfect attendance rates and encouraging peer to peer recognition are all objectives that a customer service reward program may include.

In addition to specialized goals that are relevant to specific divisions of the organization, all divisions might also reward for a set of "core" employee incentive program goals that are relevant to everyone. Core goals popular in any type of incentive program include allowing for peer to peer and on-the-spot recognition, encouraging leadership and rewarding employee longevity.