Incentives and the Workplace

I read an interesting blog post by Bob Meyer today.

Today in the workplace, the paycheck buys baseline performance…but with incentives you get exceptional effort, because they communicate that you care about and value your people.

To make rewards more effective—no matter how much you spend—you need to be as timely as possible, so the employee knows why he or she received the incentive.

That way you reinforce and encourage employees to keep doing the exceptional work that won them the incentive in the first instance.

You also must match the reward to the individual, making the incentives as personal as possible.

This means getting to know your employees, observing their interests and picking rewards that they will value and appreciate.

I must say, I have to agree. One of the things we implemented here at Shapeshift is a bonus incentive program. Every week we have an Employee of the Week award. This award gets you a small write up on our website and a small cash bonus for that week.

On top of that we tally up all the votes inside the company and the employee with the most votes receives quite a large bonus on top of his monthly salary.

The reasoning and advantage to the company behind this is:

Lets say our company turns R1 000 000 a month. This income is derived from the combined effort of all the employees. The simple math behind the bonus is, lets say we pay out R10 000 in bonuses a month and everyone works 5% harder to receive that bonus it means the company has made an extra R50 000.

This means that the bonus has paid itself off against a profit of R40 000.

Combine this with some of the ideas that Bob Meyer has wrote, it could easily mean that the 5% turns to 15%. Suddenly you are looking at quite a vast improvement in income and production turnover times.

The advantages of financial bonuses are numerous. Your employees will have more job satisfaction, as Bob Meyer rightly said, loyalty these days is strongly based on financial return. With more job satisfaction you will have a lower employee turn over rate which means more experienced employees. All these things will all effect your bottom line, for the better.

Why Corporate Blogging?

Firstly, welcome to Shapeshift New Media’s Corporate Blog. As can be seen in our bio’s, we are a Design Studio. We specialise in CMS website development, graphic design, digital design and brand management.

Moving into the corporate blogsphere was an interesting decision. We here at Shapeshift strongly believe that the web is an awesome marketing tool and that there are many untapped opportunities to develop our brand, and also educate readers on what we are busy doing.

The advertising game is a fast paced industry where you have to keep your fingers on the pulse. Blogging is no new concept and many have been doing a form of it since the conception of the Internet. Corporate blogging, on the other hand, is fairly nonexistent. Most probably due to fear of the unknown. Throwing your company philosophies and ideas into the jaws of an ever growing Internet community is not for the faint hearted.

So what exactly are the benefits of Corporate blogging? What is the return on investment for developing an identifiable, sustainable corporate voice?

The first thing that we identified is brand recognition. A well populated blog, with interesting, inspiring and technical posts can do nothing but grow your brand. It shows your company as a highly evolved entity that knows what it’s talking about.

Active participation and a good reputation in an industry’s blogsphere may lead directly to inbound calls from prospects.

Effectively, a well used Corporate blog is the ultimate public relations tool. In a forum where your main objective is not to sell, you’ll have a more personal relationship between you and your customers. Blogs are a fast way to join the customers’ discussions, provide tips and insights or receive feedback. Which eventually will lead back to leads and sales.

Publicity is the most cost-effective marketing tool there is and it’s the only part of a marketing strategy that builds credibility. Many industries have innovative start up companies that are relatively unknown. For these new companies to gain an edge over their competition, it is vital that they build credibility through publicity. What better way to do this than to blog about it. Today it was publicised that there are around 34.5 million bloggers across the world. A free market place, with free tools to access them, you just have to write things that they want to read, you would be silly not to at least try and make an impact.

I hope everyone enjoys our blog and that there are many insights to come. Feel free to comment and discuss.

Regards,

Johann Schwella