Legg Up

As a leader, you know your workplace dynamic directly impacts employee morale and, in turn, your bottom line. No matter how great [you think] your company culture might be, there is always room for improvement.

The Biggest Incentive Scheme Mistakes You Should Avoid

While some people in America & around the world think that money is the only thing that can motivate employees, there are different types of employee incentives companies can use. Money indeed has a big impact on the performance and productivity of employees. It is all a matter of balancing to avoid failure. Here are the biggest incentive scheme mistakes to avoid.

A male sitting on a desk by a whiteboard delivers a group career coaching session to a room of diverse members.

Having an isolated look at financial incentives

More companies are moving towards the “rewards model” – this means putting a value on everything the business provides the employees. Leaders must understand the total cost of benefits to employees before they layer on additional financial incentives. Staff must understand the value of their rewards. This will help them gain a realistic picture of their situation.

Some of the rewards may include conferences, the value of training, car parking, professional memberships and other benefits that contribute to the package. As you think of better employee incentives ideas, it is crucial to avoid overpaying employees. You should take your time to consider the value of incentives and benefits and tie a lot of components to employee performance.

Sharing too much when it is too early

Some leaders, managers and owners often share too much with the wrong people when it is too early. This can result in embedded incentive schemes that will be hard to pull back and later on lead to regrets. Some of the classic mistakes employers commit include double-paying sales staff for company performance and sales, putting new employees on generous incentive schemes that other employees have worked very hard to be invited into and more.

When designing employee incentives schemes, it is important to think ahead. You should let employees earn incentives and not doing it to make employees who worked hard to get incentives to think they were taken for a ride.