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There are basic rules and information one learns on first day on the job: where the bathroom is, lunch room etc. After one receives his first paycheck and benefits summary, he is off and running as a full-fledged member of the company. We all know what happens next; the new hire has a seamless transition into the workforce and becomes a productive employee.

But sometimes employees forget what they learned on their first day, or in the interviewing process. What are the company goals? What is the mission statement? How is this position benefiting the long term growth and sustainability of the company? It’s beneficial for employees to receive periodic updates on company policy and progress. Also, companies are constantly changing and employees need to stay informed. Many of our incentive and recognition program clients offer an e-mailed newsletter or an online version of their company newsletter. This allows employees to be continually engaged about goings on at their place of employment.

Unless one works for a multinational corporation who is in and out of the nightly news, how is an employee to stay informed? Companies are finding new and inventive ways to solve problems, increase profits and better the environment. I worry that employees stuck in their cubicles, heads down, working hard may miss these advancements unless they are made more readily available.

A great addition to any incentive or recognition program website is a company newsletter. Our complimentary custom websites showcase all aspects of a program, and we are always happy to incorporate any of your branding, culture or company periodicals. Office e-mails can be easily over looked; flyers posted in the break room can be missed. But when an employee logs in to check his points or redeem his gift, he is engaged and ready to consume information. He is already excited about his company’s reward program and it is a perfect opportunity to share success and improvements.

My hope for my programs who implement an employee newsletter is that accomplishments do not go unrecognized, innovations are praised and employees feel a part of a larger purpose outside of their own desk. We are all employees of the world. I would hate for your employees to feel like they live in a bubble.

Today, on LinkedIn, I ran across a guy who was looking to start a performance based incentive program. He is in the preliminary stages and is gathering information on how to start a program. From his discussion heading, I fear he is feeling overwhelmed: “So I have been tasked with developing a Performance based Incentive Plan...and am LOST!” He reminded me of one of our clients who has initiated their program but failed to get it off the ground. I cannot imagine being an employee of a company, knowing there was an employee incentive program coming, but not seeing any results. As an employee, I would be disappointed in my managers or supervisors not getting their act together.

I won’t lie; an incentive program is not an easy undertaking. I have great respect for my clients for taking on this task on top of their daily responsibilities. But as an account manager, I am here to help you! At Awards Network we want you to use our resources. We have a wealth of knowledge from working with so many different companies; we have probably run a program like yours before.

So as your potential future account manager I have some words of wisdom for you. First, stop kidding yourself that cash is a suitable reward for employees. We have found plenty of research why you should not use cash to incentivize your employees. Second, now that you will be using name-brand merchandise to reward your employees, let’s get them excited about your new program! How are you going to communicate the program to your employees? Are they savvy e-mail/ computer people? Would they prefer printed materials?

The next, and in my opinion most important step, is to establish the program goals and ways to earn points. For some reason this is the biggest hang-up for clients. After months of research, clients tend to loose site of the big picture: What are you trying to accomplish? What set you on the path to an employee incentive program in the first place? Our friend from LinkedIn was trying to boost performance. Think about your overall goal and we can help you tailor a program around your theme. You will find it is easy to reward employees once the program gets started. After rewarding employees points for going above and beyond (boosting performance), you can reward them for anniversaries (length of service, to boost employee retention) etc. It is a spiral effect that we will assist you with so you can stay in your budget.

I have two pieces of advice for you on budgets: 1) Have a budget 2) Talk to upper management about the budget and get it approved before the program starts. I have seen way too many programs delayed because proper approval was not obtained. With your budget approved and mode of communication ironed out, we are ready to begin. The hard part is over; it is very easy from here on in. Check out our incentive program checklist (a downloadable PDF) to help you stay on track.

Lastly, but most importantly, don’t lose sight of your goal whether that is boosted performance, enhanced employee engagement or employee retention. The end result is guaranteed to be happy employees.

It’s in the news: no recognition hinders employee’s productivity! According to a recent article in The Economic Times, “employees consider lack of recognition of work as the biggest hindrance to their productivity.” When a company decides to implement an employee recognition program, it’s easy to fall back on old-school recognition forms. Some old-school examples you should stay clear of are: employee luncheons, recognition in the office newsletter, names posted on bulletin boards etc. I don’t know about you, but to me these sound like horrible ways to recognize an employee. My brain immediately turns to grade-school flashbacks of standing up in front of the class and going red in the face. And what could be worse than seeing your name misspelled in the company newsletter because someone in marketing who has never heard of you couldn’t be bothered to look up the correct spelling of your name? Lastly, as a person with food allergies, an employee luncheon could be detrimental and deadly.

You may not have heard, but there are much better ways to recognize your employees. May I suggest a peer to peer recognition program? Because really, who knows your employees better than their fellow co-workers? A couple of stand-out programs come to mind when I think of great employee recognition programs. Employees in these successful programs consistently write lengthy descriptions about their fellow employees going above and beyond. And as the saying goes, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” after being recognized, employees are more likely to become a nominator themselves.

Many of the program administrators and managers are cc’d on all the nomination e-mails so they can monitor what is being submitted. This also gives them a chance to see a bird’s eye view of the day-to-day workings of their office. A great client phone call may go unnoticed if the person in the next cubical didn’t overhear and nominate that employee for a job well done. I have also seen very personal and detailed nominations submitted that only employees working right alongside someone would have noticed.

I’m not faulting upper management for not opening their office doors, but a peer-to-peer recognition program is a great way to reward employees who are doing fantastic things in the workplace. Sometimes it’s impossible to see what’s happening in every department all the time. Employees often have apprehension about talking to a manager even in positive situations. An online portal for recognition gives employees an easy and quick way to recognize their fellow co-works and then get back to work!

Aberdeen Group surveyed almost three hundred companies late last year to find out what impact a sales incentive program could have. The results of their survey have just been released and the findings are quite clear: sales incentive programs have a high return on investment. Aberdeen Group defines Best In Class Companies as the top 20% of organizations, all of which had a sales incentive program in place.

Best In Class organizations have the following in common:

• 83% of Best In Class companies' sales reps achieved annual quota in the last year compared with 51% of Industry Average firms and 22% of laggard companies.
• Best In Class companies had 23.1% average year over year growth in corporate revenue versus 7.2% for Industry Average firms and a decline of 5.9% for Laggards.
• Best In Class companies had 9.7% average year over year improvement in average deal size, compared with 1.9% for Industry Average companies and a .4% decline for Laggards.

Companies offering non-cash incentives have better results:

• Best in Class companies are more than twice as likely as all other firms to provide non cash incentives (21% of Best in Class vs 10% of other companies use R&R programs)
• Organizations that provide non cash reward/recognition had an average year over year annual corporate revenue increase of 9.6% versus 3% for all others.
• Organizations that provide non cash reward/recognition had a 2.1% year over year increase in revenue per sales FTE versus a 0.7% decrease for all others.
• Organizations that provide non cash reward/recognition had a 1.6% year over year increase in team attainment of quota versus a decrease of 2.2% for all others.
• Adopters of non-cash rewards/recognition also had 34% shorter sales rep time-to-productivity and 10% shorter sales rep time-to-hire.

Non-cash incentives were integral in achieving some of the results according to the survey. I have been seeing more case studies and research that confirms non-cash incentives such as merchandise and travel options have a greater impact than cash programs. If you haven’t read Fast Company’s article on Wooga, a German social gaming organization, this is a prime example of having non-cash incentives and perks elements come together to benefit the business. Incentive Magazine also has a great spot this month on The Continuing Case for Non-Cash Rewards that highlights how sales incentive programs delivery a higher return on investment when the rewards offered are merchandise and travel based.

All of the recent news about sales incentive program return on investment may inspire you to get started on a reward program for your company. If so, be sure to check out our free incentive program set up checklist in our resource center.

Recently, while exploring the rabbit hole of the HR blog world, I encountered a post that hit close to home in a number of ways. The blog, posted by Fistful of Talent (one of our faves) was entitled “Why do so many companies think their own employees are ugly?”. If the title isn’t enough to make you laugh out loud, the rest of the article probably is as it delves into the question of why so many companies use stock photography on their websites rather than actual photos of their employees. 

This is an issue we (your friendly Awards Network team) attempt to tackle on a couple different fronts; both as designers and maintainers of our own company website as well as in our roles as Account Managers. The way I see it, the reason people use stock photos is simple…it’s easy and gives a nice, clean look to the materials you’re creating. Plus, you don’t have to take the time to schedule a photo shoot for all your employees and/or wrestle with the camera shy employees who’d prefer to avoid the limelight.

Unfortunately, the result is a much less relevant, unique and memorable – especially when you see the same photos you carefully selected plastered around the stores and websites you visit (one of the “stock” people we used on our company site consistently mocks from a poster each time I stop by my local Goodwill store).

Now, I’m not saying I’m sold on the idea of completely structuring our company website around our own smiling faces, but our clients’ program sites are a different matter. The employee recognition programs we customize are for employees and about employees. They’re not marketing the company to the world, they’re sharing internal recognition and praise and the last thing that makes sense is to design your site around a bunch of “fake” photos…especially if you’re a small enough company that all the employees KNOW none of these people are their coworkers.

So even though we still run into companies that want to use the stock photo look, we encourage everyone to try to include as many of their own employee photos as possible. They warm the program; make it more relevant, accessible and interesting to your employees. Some of the most successful programs we’ve seen have worked their own employee photos in throughout the site or at least included a spotlight page where they can feature pictures of employees at work, at play and proudly brandishing their recognition awards. Remember, your employee recognition program is about your employees and your culture…make sure it makes that obvious in every way you can and your program will be all the more successful because of it!