The Daily Perk

Motivation First Hand

In about a week I will celebrate my fifth anniversary as an editor of Incentive magazine, so I’ve been thinking about my time here lately, but something happened at a group town hall meeting our brand new senior vice president held this week for the dozen or so magazine she oversees that really struck me.

This was the second monthly town hall in her tenure over Nielsen Business Media’s Travel and Performance Group, of which Incentive is a part. It began in the same way her first meeting did, with Sabrina singling out and honoring of a handful of employees who’d really gone above and beyond recently. This was not a revelation, as some of her predecessors had done this occasionally.

But, this time IT had managed to get the PowerPoint working, and we saw slides with the honorees names, titles and magazines. They were divided into categories matching the newly announced corporate values. Sabrina read them out and we applauded. No awards were handed out, just public kudos

Where Are We?

How good is your travel know-how? Do you recognize this destination? Email jennifer.juergens@nielsen.com with your answer, and be entered into a drawing for a $100 Marriott travel card.

Influencing and Reinforcing the Behavior You Want in Employees and Customers

By R.L. Fielding

'If only I could get people to do what I want them to do...' How often have you thought that --or said that? And how often has the answer eluded you?

We’d love to think that employees will do the right thing and that customers will make the right choice, but since only a segment of your employees are motivated to do what you need them to do, and only some of your prospects have become customers (while the others remain only prospects), the question is … how can you get the rest of the people to see the light?

The answer lies in the “Zone of Self-Interest.” People will do the things you want if they perceive it to be clearly in their own best self-interest. And when that perception exists, you’ll be well on your way to exceeding your business goals. 

Here’s How It Works

No matter what you need to accomplish, you can put a price tag on it. Some things lead to greater sales and others to lower costs. And as soon as you put a value on it, employee and customer loyalty rewards programs can help you accomplish it.

The approach is simple, and it’s proven to work. Identify a simple activity that you know to be key to your success and calculate the dollar value to you when it’s accomplished to your satisfaction…then reward it every single time it occurs. Every single time.

Every time a program participant does what you want done, he or she earns points (based on the value you’ve calculated). The points are redeemable for desirable merchandise, exotic travel, or other options. On a real-time basis, every participant can view a custom, personal statement, which details the credits and/or debits made to his/her account and the current account balance.

The Implication for You

The concept of the Zone of Self-Interest revolutionized the airline industry, then most other consumer businesses. Think about your own behavior and how it’s affected by the opportunity to earn free trips or hotel nights or merchandise for providing a seller with conscious loyalty. The rewards fall into your Zone of Self-Interest, and it motivates you to do something you normally wouldn’t do … and do it frequently.

Success breeds success. Unlike many programs that start with fireworks and finish with a fizzle, behavior reinforcement programs grow in effectiveness. With each passing day, the motivation power strengthens, and the bond between you and your program participants deepens. Simply put, a well-built behavior reinforcement program will produce more incremental revenue than it costs.

This article was provided by Dittman Incentive Marketing (http://www.dittmanincentives.com/), a quality leader in the field of people performance improvement. Since 1976, Dittman has helped companies achieve critical corporate goals via original, one-of-a-kind employee and customer loyalty rewards programs that inspire a sales force to sell more, customers to buy more, and others to do more. 

R.L. Fielding is a freelance writer who has written on a wide variety of topics, with special expertise in the education, pharmaceutical and healthcare, financial service and manufacturing industries.

Is this News "Very Good" or Just "Good"?

As economic news gets drearier, here's one positive statistic: 60 percent of North American workers said they were satisfied with their workplace in 2007, up from 54 percent in 2002, according to the Beacon group, who conducted the survey fo 31,000 employees since 2002. This study draws on a whopping 31,000 respondents from throughout Canada and the United States.

But usually these kinds of surveys are done on a grading scale (say from 0-4 with 4 being "very satisfied"), and the press statement doesn't break it down this far, only putting it as a binary breakdown of satisfied or not. It would be interesting to see if there was a change over these years between those who were very pleased with their jobs and those who are on the lower end of 'satisfied'. It would be interesting to know how much of that 60 percent rated their job as very satisfying, and if that differed from previous years.

 

Some Wednesday Morning Motivation

This morning, CNNMoney.com offers some fast and practical tips for motivating employees. They range from traditional carrots like rewarding employee referrals to more unusual choices like installing a 'light-emitting diode screen' in the lunchroom as sort of a stock ticker for employee performance. Here's a few others:

Shout it. In your company video, splice in a segment on a top worker or department. Include a new segment every few months, say Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, authors of "The Carrot Principle."

Defray costs. Occasionally offer "transit passes for commuter trains and subways, as well as speed passes for toll roads and bridges," Lloyd advised.

Reach out. Assist a strong worker with a personal issue. For example, an employee has a child who's failing math. You can provide a personal tutor for a few months, say Gostick and Elton.

Complete article here.

A Major De-Motivator

It seems like workplace bullying has reached its tipping point. That's not to say verbally abusing one's coworkers is more popular than ever (though a coworker did say some pretty harsh things about the homemade enchiladas I brought for lunch a few days ago). Rather, it looks like it has been a problem for some time, but only now is awareness and concern about workplace bullying becoming much more widespread, from Australia to England, both in person aggression and online , from superiors as well as peers.

The latest news on this bad behavior comes from researchers at Canada's Queen's University and the University of Manitoba, whose findings suggest that aggression and hostility at the office causes more serious problems for workers than sexual harassment. Drawing on 110 studies, the researchers examined bullying and sexual harassment in relation to outcomes such as job satisfaction, turnover, and psychological health. The results indicated that both sexual harassment and aggression had unhealthy consequences for employees, but in the cases of bullying these were consistently more severe.

So why are we just now hearing about this destructive behavior? It's appropriate that the researchers compare bullying to sexual harassment, which also hit a distinct tipping point, going from being unspoken and tolerated to widely recognized and addressed (company- as well as state-wide and nationally) during the early 1990s. On-the-job hostility might just be on a similar trajectory.

Bashing the U.S. Travel Experience

Last night, I was on my way back from a very pleasant four days in Cancun when I reached the customs line at JFK. And then things became not so pleasant.

The line stretched though the entire roped off line-maze, and then down the length of a very long room and halfway back up it again. And even better, it was not moving at all. The gentleman behind me—who had another flight to catch—went to take a look and discovered that the lack of movement was due to the complete lack of customs officers on the U.S. Residents line (the non-citizens line was short and moving very nicely, thank you very much). But the U.S side had no one.

There were other TSA employees in the room, who did not tell anyone what was happening or even pretend to notice us. When I suggested the man behind me show the agents his connecting flight ticket and ask if they could move him to the front of the line (which happens regularly enough at security lines going into the airport) they told him (well, grunted at him) no.

As I sat there fuming silently (as I assume doing so out loud could get me tased, cavity searched and/or do-not-fly-listed), I asked myself, if I was an incentive planner, how could I possibly recommend bringing a group into New York City?

$100 for Your Travel Knowledge

For the past couple of months we've featured Where Are We?--pictures of places
from photographers across the globe. Check out this shot and send Incentive Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Juergens an e-mail (jennifer.juergens@nielsen.com) with your guess. Winner gets a MARRIOTT gift certificate. Oh, and if you can guess where Jennifer is in the picture in this month's edit letter on incentivemag.com (Hint: It’s on the East Coast), there’s another certificate we’ll give you as an award.

Good luck!

When is a Starbucks Not a Starbucks?

Starbucks really blew it with customers at the 2008 Prepaid Card show, who lined up daily throughout the three-day event for coffee, sandwiches and snacks at what  appeared to be a Starbucks cafe unlike any other.

The Starbucks was the larger of two located inside the Rio Hotel in Vegas where the show was being held. Yes, there were little round tables with chessboard squares on the surface, there were hip little shaded lamps dangling from the ceiling, yes the employees wore green aprons, and all the familiar muffins, bagels, fruit and cheese salads, fancy sodas and organic milk were lined up in the curved refrigerated display case. There were chalk boards covered with colorful artistic scrawl, and yes there was the great big Starbucks sign on the wall--a big giveaway that this was a Starbucks--that pulled us in like moths to a flame.

But invisible to the eye, there was a notable difference from this hotel-situated Starbucks and its seemingly identical peers. A salient difference that numerous customers, such as a fellow Prepaid Card Expo attendee on line in front of me, would only discover at point of sales. Attempting to hand his Starbucks gift card to the cashier to pay  for a couple of cherry danish and coffees that he had ordered, totaling at least $15, the unwitting customer was told by the cashier "I'm sorry, we don't accept Starbucks gift cards."   

Said the bewildered customer: "A Starbucks gift card isn't acceptable at Starbucks?"
Said the employee: "We're owned by Harrah's, we don't accept Starbucks cards."

Naturally, the customer felt rightfully deceived by this technicality. And being in the gift card industry the pain must have been particularly sharp for him. At the end of his transaction using another form of payment, he communicated to the cashier that such a policy created a bad customer experience and hurt the brand. The defenseless employee agreed, adding that many other customers "were angry about it."  No doubt she had been through the same scenario with other prepaid attendees.

A New Online Feature from Incentive Magazine

Do you know what's demotivating your employees? Could it be that your star hires, who used to be full of spark, are losing their motivation on the job? Looks like your organization could use a cuture shift.

Beginning this week, subscribers and incentivemag.com site visitors can look forward to a new weekly online column-and-podcast feature from author and industry consultant Paul Levesque. Each week in  "Culture Shift,"  Paul will tackle the incentive mistakes corporations make, and address how you can start shifting your organization's culture by 180 degrees--from one that lacks luster to one that breathes motivation. And, as an added bonus, Paul will provide his own personal experiences and strategies in an accompanying video podcast (available in audio-only format as well) with his column each week to give you even greater insight into shifting your corporate culture

Read the first "Culture Shift" column, "Aligning Employee Focus With The Rule of the O.M.I.T," to discover how pinpointing the One Most Important Thing for your employees can shift your culture and inspire productivity. Also, listen to this short meet-and-greet podcast to get to know a little about Paul and what you can expect from his column each week.