In these uncertain times, the average length of an employee’s career is often determined by how well their organisation performs.
For this reason, it is important for both prospective and current employees to consider much more than just the remuneration attached to their position.
These days, smart professionals are seeking compensation and incentives that go well beyond the traditional salaries and retirement benefits.
Indeed, it is becoming almost vital for forward-thinking employees to develop a compensation and incentive strategy based on their individual contributions and competencies.
And the same holds true for most organisations.
Nowadays, in order to attract the best candidates to innovate and lead your organisation, it is important to provide your employees with comprehensive and effective incentives and compensations.
This not only enables your organisation to better retain top-performing employees, but also goes a long way towards creating a loyal and hard-working base of long-term staffers.
Another point worth making is that many of these sustained productivity improvements won’t work unless the culture of the organisation is right.
Attaining a good corporate culture involves identifying the results you want to achieve as an organisation – as well as the behaviours that lead to those results – and designing a compensation program to reinforce and reward those behaviours so they become permanently instilled in the organisation.
Once the organisation has the right culture for its employees – it becomes relatively easy to implement further changes.
With this in mind, here are five tips to help boost your employee incentive plan:
Performance-driven promotions
When an employee understands the only way he or she can earn more is to perform at higher standards; they generally become more motivated. And often, providing generous pay in return for good performance – with regular performance meetings each quarter – works better than a once-per-year evaluation.
Corporate recognition awards
Employees – particularly ‘Generation X’ and ‘Y’ – thrive on regular feedback and praise from their superiors. For job applicants, certificates of achievement in association with a rewards program, would work well in this respect
Industry educational support
In progressive workplaces, employees who are encouraged to become lifelong learners often become top performers. Also, giving your employees the tools and resources to achieve industry certifications and degrees, is proven to significantly increase the quality of work produced; as well as providing meaningful career incentives.
Corporate wellness programs
A healthy work environment equals a productive environment. Therefore, when employees are given the resources to maintain their health at work – they usually make more of an effort to improve their personal health. Indeed, multiple studies have shown that corporate wellness programs can be used to boost compensation plans and ultimately reduce many health-related costs.
Flexible and collaborative work options
Positive employees are always looking for ways to improve their work-life balance. Therefore, giving them the ability to work a flexible schedule – such as from a collaborative home environment – can be a big plus. And when presented as part of a compensation strategy, this can help improve your recruitment and retention rates enormously.
Courtesy: Payscale.com
Research has also shown that work engagement and satisfaction increases significantly with better benefits and incentives.
Indeed, according to a 2013 Aflac WorkForces Report, 68 per cent of workers who are satisfied with their overall benefits packages are also satisfied with their jobs – compared to only five per cent of workers who are satisfied with their jobs but not satisfied with their benefits packages.
Performance management plan
Of course, while a good compensation plan and remuneration are both hugely important, it is also worth considering the benefits of a good performance management plan for organisations.
Some advantages include:
- It helps link performance evaluation with employee development and rewards to motivate individuals
- Assists the organisation in improving its productivity and efficiency
- Assists in monitoring progress towards the achievement of performance objectives
- Identifies specific training needs across the organisation.
Courtesy: Australian HR Institute
Finally, employers should also bear in mind that when offering performance-driven bonuses for employees, it is also important to outline clear goals ahead of time.
A good way is to use the ‘SMART’ goals system, whereby each goal is:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-Focused and Time-Bound.
By outlining these elements, it becomes much simpler and clearer for employers to assess whether or not each goal has been achieved.