Reward and incentive strategy

Michael Dermer
President and CEO
IncentOne

Cost savings for employers…rewards for employees. It sounds a lot like ‘consumerism’ in healthcare – making employees more accountable for healthcare decisions and better consumers of healthcare services.

But is ‘consumerism’ a concept that should be limited to health? Shouldn’t we be telling employees, “If you deliver clear, measurable and verifiable benefits for the organization, you will be rewarded?” Isn’t the goal to reduce costs and make employees more accountable for activities that are integrally tied to their performance, not just in healthcare but in everything they are doing?

The answer is an integrated reward and incentive strategy. In 2005 and 2006, employers embraced a compensation and benefits strategy to integrate the various components of employee benefits into a single overriding strategy: ‘total rewards’. Rewards and incentives have traditionally been grouped together as one component contributing to this strategy.

Doesn’t that miss the mark? Shouldn’t incentives and rewards be the hub of total rewards as opposed to a single spoke in the wheel? An integrated reward and incentive strategy is the ‘missing link’ between business strategy and all aspects of day-to-day employee performance.

TOTAL REWARDS MANAGEMENT

As we look to the future, an integrated reward and incentive strategy – Total Rewards Management (TRM) – will emerge as employers leverage the experience from driving reductions in healthcare costs to other corporate drivers such as productivity, safety, absenteeism, turnover, sales performance and any other objective that has financial benefit to an organization.

Unfortunately, for many companies that run fragmented programs, it is difficult to measure the activities and behaviors of managers and recipients as well as the goals and results of programs as a whole. The key to this link is an integrated strategy supported by solutions that deliver integration and flexibility.

Fortunately, the advances of solution providers such as IncentOne and improvements in technology provide employers with an opportunity that was not available before – to integrate previously fragmented reward and incentive initiatives into a comprehensive system with real-time tracking, reporting, auditing and improvement. This integrated approach provides the opportunity to establish performance initiatives, measure results against stated goals and implement processes and procedures to target areas for improvement.

The key to this link is an integrated strategy supported by solutions that deliver integration, the flexibility to be applied to different audiences and objectives and a ‘just-in-time’ delivery model.

Imagine the day when delivering incentives and rewards is no different than ‘just-in-time’ inventory. Today, when a dealer sells a car in Florida, a new car starts the production process in Shanghai, China. Soon, with an integrated incentive strategy in place, when data shows that employees in Portland are 15 percent behind benchmarks for quarterly sales performance, communications will be instantaneously delivered to those employees: “increase performance by 10 percent before the end of the month and receive…”

The time to plan your integrated incentive strategy is now

Michael Dermer is President and CEO of IncentOne, a leading provider of award-winning incentive solutions based in Carlstadt, NJ. Mr. Dermer is a frequent speaker at national and regional conferences and is also a member of numerous healthcare, benefits, compensation and human resource societies. For information on how IncentOne can provide you with an integrated incentive solution, or for a free consultation, please visit our website at www.IncentOne.com.