Incentivizing Improved Performance

Have a team that produced great results when their past performance was consistently less than stellar?  Was this a one-time bump or will there be long-lasting results?  Do you think the team will show high performing metrics next review?  You probably know the answer to this.

Companies and their internal organization should have plans to improve or innovate their products and services.  Those plans need to be developed with and approved by the Board, flowed down through the Leadership Team, and marketed to the employees.  These plans should be visual, achievable and relevant enough so that anyone we ask will understand what right looks like.  We are asking for everyone's support as if the future of the company depends on it, because it does.

We know this is a journey and we should be plotting our course, stop once in a while and take a look at the progress you have made.  Bring the team together and show them that working together to a common goal can make happen. Along the way, take pictures, shoot some video, interview people involved in the change, and use your project documentation to create storyboards to help show the transformation.  Remember this is not small step change on one little project, but transformation across an entire site.

Think about how to reward the teams for this amount of change.  A pay increase would be great, but we're talking about real employee appreciation not short-term impacts that are quickly accepted as the normal condition.  Employees today are looking to make a personal connection that can act as compound interest on their careers.  They also want to know that their contributions are making a difference.

Companies in the recent past paid some percentage of the savings.  This is nice too, but too often the savings are soft or cost avoidance types of savings.  While these opportunities need to be implemented also, they increase capacity of the team and have the affect of reducing over-time to achieve better balance between life and work.  We have seen this types of reward systems become abused and leaves a bitter taste with the Leadership team when reductions to bottom line costs are not realized.

This type of thinking can certainly be used to motivate employees to continue improving and innovating, and employees knowing their efforts are appreciated make huge steps in retaining them.  Green Belt or Black Belt shirts with company logos are nice, but mentoring from the boss and opportunities to move up the ladder reinforce the confidence in the actual people doing the actual work.

What type of actions have you used to show employee appreciation?