Incentives schemes and perks – whether financial or non-financial, individual, team or group-based – can help you to recruit and retain valuable staff, reward performance and productivity and get the best out of your employees. Incentives are particularly effective if you want to motivate your sales team or build and maintain energy levels across the business.
Reward extra effort. Business success is, after all, largely dependent on the continuous improvement of people’s performance at work. Almost everyone has the capacity to perform better, whether they produce documents, deliver services or create company policy. Recognition for a job well done and being rewarded over and above their basic pay for making an extra effort are what really make people give their all at their place of work.
Remember birthdays. One incentive that is proving to be very popular is the Birthday Club, devised by Sally Miller of SALESkicks, a company that specialises in sales and business incentives.
“Birthdays are personal and therefore have great emotional value attached to them,” she says. “People generally have a sense of occasion when it comes to birthdays. That’s why the Birthday Club works so well.”
SALESkicks’s Birthday Club is a fully customisable system that can be set up to incorporate staff, sales teams, management and even customers. Once the programme is agreed on with the client, SALESkicks designs a website for the company where participants can register their details. On the date of the birthday, they have a selection of five gift buttons to choose from. SALESkicks’s team is automatically alerted about upcoming birthdays and the employee’s choice of gift is wrapped, branded with the company logo and delivered within 24 hours.
Boost morale
“Incentives do not necessarily have to be financial,” notes Miller. “Non-financial gifts that recognise the personal aspect of employee’s lives can often be far more effective morale boosters.”
She stresses that incentives play an important role in staff retention, with the best people being rewarded for their efforts. “Incentives can range from a simple one-day individual sales drive, to an enterprise-wide promotional theme,” Miller says.
Effective incentive schemes enable companies to connect with their people in a number of ways and yield several benefits. Incentives encourage people to focus on achieving their targets; they recognise employee priorities and lifestyles and therefore encourage attachment to the business; they recognise individual achievement; and by recognising teamwork they also help to improve individual under-performance.
“It goes without saying that motivated people are more productive and more likely to achieve,” Miller says.
For more information, contact Sally Miller on +27 11 463 0753, or visit www.saleskicks.co.za