As the U.S. health-care reform debate rages on, employee wellness programs are increasingly becoming an important consideration for many companies. Wellness programs are taking their place among a host of proposed solutions to improve care and reduce costs for more people. In this installment, the authors discuss the challenge in incentive programs of trying to create incentives across multiple behaviors when necessary, and monitoring the change in those behaviors to improve performance.
The authors last two columns focused on cash and other tangible awards as motivators and how important it is to give employees a choice in the awards they want. In this installment, we explore answers to two other important questions you need to answer when planning an incentive or recognition award program: How often you should reward individuals during the program (frequency), and how long you should your program run (duration)?
For as long as the incentive and recognition award industry has been in existence (more than 100 years by some estimates) there has been thisquestion: "What's the best award to use to drive improved performance?"
Since the beginning of the downturn in the economy, much as been written and discussed on the value of employee recognition award programs. In an effort to cut costs during this recession, management is questioning the effectiveness of employee reward programs, and unfortunately, many award program budgets have been reduced.
In this installment, the authors look at the idea of "choice" in regards to incentives and awards for employees. Who decides what is awarded in your company? It may be time to re-evaluate and determine if your employees are really receiving a "meaningful" award if their choice is limited.