An incentive is a tool used to motivate people to do something they would not otherwise do.
Uri Gneezy shows in his book “Mixed Signals. How Incentives Really Work” a number of examples of bad incentives and what to do instead. I looked at his advice from a reward management perspective and picked up the following tips for designing employee benefits:
🪀Build benefits around something people do not like to pay for, e.g. prepaid fuel cards are more effective than discounts on company products
🪀Try provisional benefits - employees have a set amount for benefits which they lose after some time if it is not used
🪀Host “regret lotteries”, e.g. by randomly selecting the name of an employee at the end of the working day who will receive a bonus, e.g. 50 euros, if they came to work by public transport that day
🪀 If your funds are tight, you can also consider donating to charity. I.e. for every employee who participated in the office cleaning day, 10 euros will be donated to homeless cats
🪀If you want your employees to go to the gym more or adopt other habits, form buddy pairs where one party is already doing the task/going to the gym
🪀 Use employee benefits to increase the cost of changing jobs, e.g. invest together or for employees to make it more expensive to leave the company
Not everyone can be targeted through incentives. There are people who are already perfoming the task and those who will not perform the task for no matter what. Think of benefits as signals to influence those who are sceptical or confused, and look for any clues that will help them decide.
🪀Build benefits around something people do not like to pay for, e.g. prepaid fuel cards are more effective than discounts on company products
🪀Try provisional benefits - employees have a set amount for benefits which they lose after some time if it is not used
🪀Host “regret lotteries”, e.g. by randomly selecting the name of an employee at the end of the working day who will receive a bonus, e.g. 50 euros, if they came to work by public transport that day
🪀 If your funds are tight, you can also consider donating to charity. I.e. for every employee who participated in the office cleaning day, 10 euros will be donated to homeless cats
🪀If you want your employees to go to the gym more or adopt other habits, form buddy pairs where one party is already doing the task/going to the gym
🪀 Use employee benefits to increase the cost of changing jobs, e.g. invest together or for employees to make it more expensive to leave the company
Not everyone can be targeted through incentives. There are people who are already perfoming the task and those who will not perform the task for no matter what. Think of benefits as signals to influence those who are sceptical or confused, and look for any clues that will help them decide.