Why incentive plans cannot work

Incentive plans are an essential part of having a successful business. For any company, big or small, the first order of business should always be having a great, supportive staff. Once that dream staff has been built, it’s vital to keep them motivated so they’ll work at the top of their capacities, understanding their role within the team and individually. Management incentive plans should always be in order, but there are a few reasons why incentive plans cannot work.

A well-oiled incentive system serves a variety of purposes: it keeps employees motivated, eases communication between team members, and increases productivity in different sectors. However, depending on the incentive plan and the way it’s managed, a reward system can end up having the opposite consequences the employer wants.

An incentive approach that doesn’t work properly can:

• Drive workers towards unpleasant competition. A little competition between team members to achieve specific rewards or benefits can be healthy, but without proper management, things can get vicious, leading to issues of all sorts.
• Decrease productivity. While it might seem counterintuitive, it happens. For example, if employees are rewarded for finishing a lot of reports, they might hand them in by the loads – without checking for quality. Ultimately, that means things have to be redone from scratch, wasting time and decreasing productivity.
• Exhaust exployees. Meeting goals to reach a specific price or reward can be a fun challenge, but an excess can lead to exhaustion. Workers might end up burned out when striving towards what their superiors have set them up to do, ultimately resulting in worse performance.

When dealing with the well-being of your employees, you deserve to have a professional team on the job. At RUSMICE, we have over 12 years of experience in building personalized employee incentives programs for companies of all sizes and industries. Contact us to find out more!