I recently read the following post: Incentives and Consequences | fastgrowth advisors.
It reminded me of a post I did a year and a half ago titled What is Paid for REALLY Gets Done.
Have you thought about the consequences of the incentives you offer to your staff? Are they really driving the behaviours you want? Or can they be distorted or cheated?
Actually, do you even measure the results?
We often look for the easy way out. Developing the right incentives can be really simple and straightforward or very complex, but doing it right is never easy.
Bruce Temkin recently had a good blog post on using customer feedback to drive compensation (Should Customer Feedback Scores Drive Compensation?) He also has a good basic plan for implementing it.
Who Are the Clients?
Think about who the clients of the incentives are. They are your employees.
Look at the incentives you want to (or already have) implemented from their point of view. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel? How would you react?
This isn't easy, most managers have distanced themselves from the rank and file and most have been disconnected for a long time.
Hopefully, you try to think like a client before launching a product or service...
Shouldn't you do the same with your internal clients?
You don't have to do anything. I'm just asking you to think about it...
What do you think?