I have been approached by a friend of mine in Poland who is a management and training consultant (principally concentrating on women entrepreneurs). She poses the following request for advice. Can the Community help with the wide experience you all have?
"I've been approached by someone representing one of Polish
training/conference magazines with a challenge to organise a
conference/seminar for incentive/event managers. The conference would be
about motivating people through incentive trips and events. This woman sais
she has a lot of questions stating need for such conference and possibility
to exchange experiences. How does it look like in Britain? Do you still
motivate people through incentive trips? Does it work long term? What would
be your advice."
Any responses either on forum or email. Thank you
Leslie Rae, [email protected]
Leslie Rae
One Response
Incentive Schemes
Incentive schemes are used in business to affect the way that Employees behave.
If we want more productivity we make an incentive, to reduce absenteeism we make an incentive, to increase sales, we make an incentive.
But in each case we only truly succeed in improving performance if we generate a change in behaviour that sustains the change in performance in the long term and to do this the work force must become involved.
In order to become involved there has to be something in it for them.
Nobody will change their behaviour unless they experience a “Win” when they make a change.
The incentive and bonus schemes appear to work well in the short term.
The reward however soon becomes an expectation and loses its power to act as an incentive.
We humans as a species are fiendishly adept at defeating these engineered solutions with strategies that will allow us to continue to gather the reward without changing our behaviour.
The reward that cannot be bought costs nothing.
Imagine your department is due for a business review and you are well ahead of the curve with your preparation.
On Friday afternoon it is announced that the Directors of the parent company will be in country and the review will now take place on Tuesday instead of the following Friday, to allow them to be present.
Your boss asks you to bring your schedule forward.
This requires you to work all weekend to be ready.
Your efforts allow you to make the presentation on time and you are relieved that the Directors do not appear displeased.
This is a familiar story of response to a pressure that is both difficult to resist and increasingly expected.
Now one of the Directors walks across as you are packing away and says “I’m sorry I couldn’t rearrange my schedule to fit in with your original programme, thanks for your work, that was impressive.”
Now, how do you feel?
Feedback that is Appropriate, Positive and Timely costs nothing.
Involvement is not an instant thing that can be bought.
It is built up slowly and is the result of repeated experience.