Incentive Plans and Employee Profiles

One of the key steps in the process of developing an incentive plan is to identify the current level of employee understanding and expectations. Normally this is done with an employee survey and, while there are several good commercial instruments available, many organizations customize their own.

If you want your employees to be engaged in the business, a good approach is to develop a “partner” profile. You can start by defining the critical attitudes, behaviors, skills, and understanding an employee needs in order to think and act like a business partner. These elements can then be used in a survey to identify how closely the employee population conforms to the "ideal" partner.

A company moving toward a partner oriented, high performance culture may want to sort the survey into essential business categories. For example, a survey may consist of Cultural, Business, and Finance categories. The questions in each category should focus on the types of attitudes, behaviors and understanding necessary for success in that category.

Questions under the Cultural category may deal with how well the employees understand the processes that enable them to participate and become involved, or how effective they think these processes are, or how actively they participate in these processes. Other questions may focus on issues such as: Is there a team mentality? To what degree is there group and individual problem solving? Is there open and accessible communications? To what extent does respect exist in the workplace? How empowered the employees perceive themselves to be. Is there trust that permits risk-taking? To what extent are all employees involved in the goal setting and decision making?

Under the Business category questions may explore how well the employees understand the business strategy and their role in achieving specific goals. How well do they understand the industry and the company's position in it? To what degree are they aware of the competitive pressures, economic influences, and other big picture issues?

Under the Financial category questions may probe how well the employees understand how the company makes a profit and generates cash. Do they understand how their contribution affects revenue and profit? How often do they receive financial information? To what degree do they understand it? Do they participate in the collection of this data? Do they participate in goal setting as it relates to the data? How much performance feedback do they receive? How often?

The survey results compare your employee population to the profile of a mature partnership culture. The differences are obvious and they highlight opportunities for development and education which, in turn, will affect performance and the outcomes of any incentive plan.

If you’re having trouble developing good content for your culture survey, contact us.

Work as an enjoyable flow activity

"When a group, team or company has a common purpose and open channels of communication, when it provides gradually expanding opportunities for action (empowerment) in a setting of trust, then 'work' becomes an enjoyable flow activity.

Employees will focus their attention on the group or organization relationship and, to a certain extent, forget their individual selves for the sake of experiencing the enjoyment of belonging to a more complex system that joins separate consciousnesses in a unified goal."*

Making work more enjoyable has proven to increase profits, cash flow and asset value.
Are you investing in your human resource assets? Do you have a focused and dedicated workforce?
Is there an investment that can produce a better return?

*Excerpted (and slightly edited) from "Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Harper Perennial press