“Great job, Sally Sue! Here is a new ball point pen so you can take orders more efficiently,” exclaims Bob the Boss. As Bob walks away, he thinks to himself, “I bet my employees really appreciate the employee incentive program the company has.” What is Sally thinking right now? Sally is probably thinking the best use for the new pen she received is to throw it at Bob the Boss.

Corporate gifts given as employee incentives are worthless unless the giver consciously thinks about the person they want to reward. Ensuring that your company creates the appropriate employee incentives through the use of corporate gifts may seem trivial, but its trivialities such as these that make employees want to work overtime on a pending project.

There are three keys to identifying what employee incentives will work for your company and employees.

• Employee incentives must be tailored to the person receiving the recognition.

Employee incentives in the form of a corporate gift or a promotional product should make an employee take notice. In the article “The Effective Employee Incentive Program” in Innovative Leader, G.A. Andy Marken said that employee incentives do not need to be expensive to be meaningful. They should think to themselves, “Wow. This wine gift basket is for me. My boss must really appreciate the work I do.”

• Employee incentives should be earned and not given out haphazardly.

Giving corporate gifts to employees without reason defeats the purpose of an employee incentive program. This does not mean that bosses should not give employees things without reason, but it does mean they should save the meaningful corporate gifts for the employee incentive program.

• Employee incentives must have a purpose and inspire employees to actually help and want to aid in the process of making your company a better provider to your customers.

In the article “Bad Bait- Employee incentive programs” in Entrepreneur, Jacquelyn Lynn said, “If you’re considering a new incentive program, ask employees what motivates them.” Know if your employees would rather get golf balls or a USB drive; details such as these means a more effective employee incentive program.

Following these simple rules will help ensure that your employee incentive program will succeed and that everyone at the company will be happy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 9:23 am and is filed under Promo Ideas, Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.