8 Tips To Increase Your Bottom Line
8 Tips To Increase Your Bottom Line
Growing your business may have more to do with what's going on
inside your offices than outside in the marketplace. If you
looking to increase your bottom-line you may only need to look
at what's motivating your workers performance. So how do you
improve performance?
Landing a large contract can be a milestone for a growing
company but if your team is ill motivated to fulfill the demands
of the contract loss may be eminent. Increased demands to
improve productivity while cutting costs have made it more
necessary than ever for employers to examine methods that get
the best results possible from their workers. Providing
incentives based programs is believed to be the best path to
performance improvement.
Some argue that incentives only cause companies to pay more for
the result they would have achieved if no incentive program were
in place. Yet according to the Stolovitch study well designed
and implemented incentive systems increase performance
dramatically, the researchers found. Only 8% of surveyed
employees said they would have achieved the results without
incentives. The key here, Stolovitch noted, is to base the
incentives on improved performance.
Still some believe that incentive programs create
competitiveness. While others believe a little competition keeps
everyone on their toes. That said, many companies claim that
incentive programs, administered effectively, encourage mutual
support and improved teamwork. According to the Stolovitch study
incentives were found to increase the value people assign to
important work goals. Rewarding people for exceeding goals
causes them to value their work more, leading to increased
self-confidence and loyalty to the organization.
That said, managers and executives are most frequently rewarded
for reaching long-term goals. Rewards most often include
incentive compensation, year-end bonuses, and profit sharing.
Non-manager employees are more likely to receive spot bonuses,
usually associated with reaching short-term goals. It is
especially important to reward staff for exceeding performance
goals.
Among the common incentive programs that work most effectively
are the following:
1. Issue a weekly challenge to motivate staff to enhance
productivity.
2. Hold on-the-spot contests to reach daily and weekly goals.
3. Announce impromptu $100 bonuses when teams exceed goals
4. Enhancing a job title to reward performance
5. Keep a "goody box" for significant daily contributions toward
enhancing performance.
6. Use e-mail to motivate staff via one-on-one communication.
According to a recent survey by SHRM of HR professionals, nearly
half say money is the best reward to their top employees. There
are numerous types of rewards for good teamwork and individual
performance. According to the following personalized rewards
work best.
1. Issue Gift certificates for valuable ideas
2. Offer profit shares for top performers
3. Offer Free night classes to advancing team players
4. Let staff choose their own incentives.
5. Free Lunch for a week or restaurant issued gift cards
6. Personalize monetary and non-monetary rewards to the
individual preference and potential.
7. Offer company shares
8. Offering prepaid debit gift cards from credit card issuers
like American Express or MasterCard. The card provides the
recipient a designated spending value that can be used anywhere
anyplace and anytime. Prepaid Debit cards or stored value cards
seem to work most effectively in the work place as a less
complicated incentive program to achieve improved performance
and raise the bar of your standard of productivity. Managers and
execs don't have to worry about handling cash or sifting thru
stacks of bulky gift certificates. Prepaid debit cards are
easily tracked online, replaced when lost or stolen and
additional funds can be added to the card on the fly.
Reynolds American's board gave six top executives about $10
million in benefits as part of a long-term incentive plan. The
so-called "performance shares" are cash payments based on the
company's stock price.
One successful businessman said, "Entrepreneurs should continue
rewarding employees, because if they don't raise the bar someone
else will."