Creating an Incentive Program: Avoiding Favoritism and Instilling Merit Based Rewarding

Simply put, an effective and non-bias employee rewards program should be based off of a rewarding system for the purpose of strengthening business relationships internally and building employee confidence because you are highlighting their superior work performance or their achievement of an anticipated goal.

Avoid the complexities related to favoritism or preferential treatment. Rewards should be a result of a well-planned and effective incentive program that fosters and reinforces your employee relations through motivation and recognition. Efforts to reward individual achievements/milestones can set up a system where other employees would want to emulate the achievers and this potential domino effect can increase the overall company’s productivity.

A well thought out incentive program includes having an incentive strategy, measurable objectives, budget etc. For example, make sure your goals within your incentive plan are attainable and measurable. If standards are set too low, rewarding will become commonplace and not worthwhile. If standards are set too high then employees will feel discouraged and will remain unmotivated because they will feel their efforts amount to nothing. If your goals are immeasurable then the effectiveness of the incentive program is ambiguous or non quantifiable and you cannot track the specific achievements of your employees.

An incentive program isn’t about making favorites or rewarding personnel randomly every week but creating a valuable means of motivation and recognition that would fortify internal relations and maximize constructive employee output.