Any business owner will agree employee incentives are one of their more difficult challenges. Employee incentives are about recognising and rewarding performance, as well as encouraging improved performance. Whether it’s a non monetary reward for good attendance or a monetary incentive in the form of sales commission; it’s hard to tell whether the incentive will work or if your business will benefit.

Here are a few examples of monetary, non monetary and commission based incentives that have worked for me.

Non monetary incentives
One of our divisions recently awarded two gold passes to Village Cinemas to employees who had not been late, absent due to illness, personal circumstances or annual leave in the last 30 days. This led to an 18 per cent increase in employees completing a full 38 hour week. The gold passes were presented at the monthly staff barbeque and created a positive atmosphere.

Monetary incentives
Another effective way of encouraging attendance is with a strategically planned remuneration system. In a previous workplace, an incentive of $25 extra per week was offered to anyone who successfully completed a 38 hour week.

Commission based schemes
My experience with sales commissions has been in the sale of a manufactured product which not only required a great deal of technical skill and but also needed to be tailored specifically to customer requirements.  The salespersons were located in three states and required to work alone out of an affiliate company office.

An effective remuneration system is one that offers a real incentive to employees to achieve targets.

An incentive scheme was devised which allowed for a training period on a flat rate of pay because all leads were being fed to the salesperson. This then lead to a graduating amount based on their own leads which was combined with numbers of vehicles sold above a certain level.  This proved a very successful formula which took into account the difficulties associated with distance and self motivation requirements.

A smile and a thank you
Lastly, I believe one of the simplest incentives is appreciation and acknowledgement.  While awards such as Employee of the Month are nice, sometimes a smile and thank you is enough to raise morale and provide encouragement. Publicly acknowledging creative thinking and loyalty to the business goes a long way in making employees feel valued.

Jill Walsh General Manager

Jill Walsh is the General Manager of ARM Group Australia a consortium of 4 companies who employ 250+ staff. ARM Group supplies components to the rail rolling stock industry. With a background in accounting Jill has had management roles across many industries including retail, hospitality and manufacturing. Her current position involves administration and project management, with advice across human resources, OH & S and finance to ARM Companies. Read more…