I speak with dealers all the time about incentivizing their employ-
ees. I like the word "incentivize" because it is a verb and an action
word. Sometimes, dealers look at it as a burden instead of an op-
portunity. I've received the following responses that reflect that
type of attitude. "We tried that once, and it didn't work," or "That
is a lot of hassle to figure out something additional on top of their
salary," or "I pay them a good wage, so shouldn't that be enough?"
While these responses are valid, I think that the problem lies in
the word "incentive" itself. Instead of calling them "incentive pro-
grams," I like to think of them as "reward programs" that allow us
to "incentivize" individuals or teams for producing more profit
for the company and making them stretch to reach for a goal.
This is a win-win situation for both the employee and the dealer-
ship. A study conducted by the SITE Foundation gives us a little
insight into these reward programs and how well they work.
Some interesting findings in the study include:
Programs aimed at individual workers increase perfor-
mance by 27 percent.
Programs aimed at teams increase performance by 45 per-
cent.
Programs have an equally positive impact on both quality
and quantity goals.
Programs structured with employee input work best; however,
only 23 percent of programs were selected with employee input.
20 JULY 2015 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com
How to incentivize
your employees
3 Ps of establishing a mutually beneficial reward program
■ BY JEFF SHEETS
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JAUHARI
FEATURE STORY | Best Practices
