Is your staff reward program unconsciously destroying your teams appetite for innovation and risk?

• Long Service Awards? Tick

• Rewards for Exceeding Sales targets? Tick

• Employee of the Month recognition? Tick

• Training, health & wellness and Saftey rewards? Got ’em.

What about rewards for failure? A recent article in Training Mag, outlines Gerard Tellis’s philosophy around nurturing a culture of innovation through “incentives for enterprise”. Because the voyage to innovation is about uncertainty, seeking out the unknown and risk, failure is common. If this exploration is deemed to be potentially detrimental to their career prospects by an employee, or likely to result in punishment for failure, innovation will be completely stifled.
To foster a culture of innovation, employees need to be recognised and rewarded for developing and implementing innovations with strong rewards for success and weak penalties for failure. If employees are allowed to learn from their failures rather than being punished they will continue to pursue and develop innovations.
In reality this brings us back to the fact that any reward program must start with an alignment to organisational objectives. Too many employee reward and incentive programs are one dimensional and only focus on individual business components like sales targets, cost savings or years of service.
It is essential that your staff reward program recognises and rewards other types of behaviour –behaviours which marry to the overall goals, aspirations and mission of an organisation.If innovation, new products and new ideas are essential for your survival than ensure your reward program nurtures not stifles these innovations.
Rewards Come True offer custom designed eftpos gift cards which can be used to support staff incentive and bonus programs. Cards be stand alone corporate gift cards or reloadable as part of an ongoing program