Best Practices For Offering Incentive Plans to Your Employees

In today’s competitive business climate, the only true way to successful growth and innovation is through hiring and retaining the best employees in your industry. To do this, your business must be able to stand out from the competition by offering more than just a paycheck and a few standard benefits. Candidates are looking for the entire package when considering the companies they want to work for and this comes right down to multiple levels of benefits they hope to take advantage of.

To make certain your employee incentive plan is rolled out and managed well, here are some best practices for offering these perks.

Choose incentives that reflect corporate values. The type and value of the incentive program that you offer to employees can be a direct reflection of your mission and values as a company. Make sure whatever you decide to offer is in line with your long-term business goals and is something you can stand behind 100 percent. For example, providing a health and wellness program communicates to your employees that you care about their well-being.

Understand what motivates your employees. An incentive element is only as good as the perceived value it has to your employees. Learn what your employees are most interested in by conducting a confidential poll to evaluate your current benefit program. Seek input from your employees and talk with management to gather ideas for better incentives, based on common employee complaints. Gather this feedback and design a meaningful incentive plan around the results.

Offer multiple incentive options. Because your employees come from diverse demographics, they may not find the incentives you are offering all that relevant to their needs. One example of this is young employees who may not be that interested in an advanced retirement savings plan as your employees who are in more advanced age brackets. Be sure to offer incentives that honor the diversity in your employee population, so there is added appeal.

Make incentives highly visible. As you introduce new or improved employee incentives, make sure you make a big production about it with multiple modes of communication and promotion. Announce it at company meetings, ask your managers to encourage participation, and make it easy for employees to get on board with these incentives early on. Remind employees that they can sign up during benefits open enrollment and that they should sign off on either acceptance or if they decline these benefits. (You can even display it in your HR office with a brochure or rack card!)

Update and add new incentives annually. Even the best incentive plans can become boring over time. As the human resource executive, it’s your job to make sure that new incentives are added to the offering on a regular basis. At least once a year, evaluate each incentive’s success, and find better options to motivate employees.

Provide unique perks. What can help your business stand out from competitors is your ability to offer incentives that are far beyond the norm. Try coming up with at least one highly unique perk that your company can offer to employees. This might be an exclusive corporate discount club, an industry-specific benefit, or something that shakes the foundation of your market to give you notoriety.

Most importantly, when designing and administering employee incentive plans is fair and timely delivery of earned incentives. Give your employees a reason to be productive and loyal to your company with creative and relevant incentives.

Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Mike Walters. Mike blogs for EngagementHealth about employee health incentive programs, and spends his free time attending live music performances and going to the opera.