Back to the Press Room Menu >

The Best Incentive Programs of 2005
Ranging from simple to complex, the best incentive programs of the year prove that the road to motivation has many lanes.

By William Flanagan
IncentiveMag.com

DECEMBER 01, 2005 - -- Whether your goal is to improve safety, increase sales or motivate employees, the best incentive plans have one thing in common: All of them have in-depth and complete knowledge of the people they're targeting, what they want to achieve and how they want to reward that achievement. Each of the five programs you'll read about here adds another dimension to that mix: creativity that has led them to be honored with the Incentive Marketing Association's 2005 Circle of Excellence Award.

Sales Incentive

Diebold and USMotivation: "Hawaii 0-Five"

As region manager for USMotivation, an Atlanta–based incentive house, Scott Siewert took on the task of designing a program for North Canton, Ohio–based Diebold that would increase sales of the Fortune 500 company's products and motivate it's sales force. The reward for the sales team was a trip to Hawaii. The main problem, according to Siewert, was that most of Diebold's top sales performers had been to Hawaii numerous times on previous incentive trips. So the task of making Hawaii attractive–which should have been easy–turned into a challenge. "How do you motivate a crowd that's been there, done that?" asks Siewert. "I submit that you do that through selling a dream of where they can be, and making it larger than life through good promotions and communications. That's the key."

To build that dream for Diebold, USMotivation developed the Hawaii 0-Five program, a clever reworking of the name of the old TV show, "Hawaii Five-0". Siewert's team even came up with a sub-theme, "Hana Hou Maui," or "one more time Maui" in Hawaiian. The Hawaii 0-Five plan included a Web site where the sales team members could monitor their progress and check out the features of the reward, including the hotels and activities available. Participants also would be sent e-mails charting progress and talking up the program. "It was a promotional Web site in that it hyped the destination," says Siewert. "Diebold saw that using the Web and sending out e-mails and keeping [the program] on top-of-mind would be important, and we accomplished that through the Web site."

In terms of a benchmark for success, Diebold gave Siewert no specific numbers, but the company was clear that it wanted more salespeople to make this trip than ever before.

The winning group was split into two groups based on their success rates. The larger group, called the Master's Circle, was open-ended, which meant any number of people could qualify. A second group, the Circle of Excellence, was closed-ended; only the top 10 percent of those who earned Master's Circle status would gain admission into the Circle of Excellence.

The end result was a successful program with sales performance results that climbed 12.9 percent over those of the previous year's. "Diebold wanted a record number of attendees and they got that. We started off forecasting 225 people and it ended up being [over 400]."

The initiative's success, however, translated into USMotivation having to find additional hotel space in Maui at a busy time–late February. "What we ended up doing was having people in five different hotels. We had to move the awards banquet to another hotel, and then we finished up the ceremony at the original hotel, the Four Seasons Resort Maui," notes Siewart. "We had to come up with some creative twists to make this all happen, and in the end, everything was wonderful, but it took a lot of thought and planning to make that happen."

Customer Service

T-Mobile and Marketing Innovators: "Do More, Get More"

In their successful drive to improve customer service, Bellevue, WA–based T-Mobile and Marketing Innovators left no stone unturned in their bid to find out the demographics of the nationwide telecommunications company's targeted employees and how best to motivate them to embrace T-Mobile's brand promise, "Get More." "Many wireless carriers focus on generating a large customer base," says Diane Gillespie, director of marketing and communications for Rosemont, Illinois–based Marketing Innovators. "T-Mobile's focus is based on its brand promise 'Get More': more minutes, more features and more service. T-Mobile's goal was to ensure that T-Mobile's customer service professionals understood the implied promise of 'Get More' and were able to deliver on it."

The customer service initiative focused on 11,000 members of T-Mobile's customer- facing employees in 15 call centers across the nation. Not surprisingly, a group this large represented a diverse sampling of ages, ethnic groups and geography. This fact prompted T-Mobile and Marketing Innovators to run extensive surveys and focus groups in order to find out what would motivate the entire target audience, not just a small segment of it, and how to benchmark the progress. "T-Mobile felt that most programs consistently reward the top ten to twenty percent of the workforce," says Gillespie. "In addition to rewarding the top performers, T-Mobile felt there was significant potential in the mid-sixty percent, and that if it motivated this group to meet and exceed their KPIs [key performance indicators], it could significantly impact the level of customer service they provided. T-Mobile also did an extensive upfront assessment of the 'current situation' in terms of KPI achievement, employee and customer satisfaction, and other employee metrics prior to the launch of this program," Gillespie says.

After understanding who it was they needed to target, T-Mobile and Marketing Innovators rolled out the program, which awarded participants various travel and activity incentives. T-Mobile promoted the program using national events, conference calls, meetings and newsletters. Then the company kept constant watch on the program to make sure it was having the desired impact on customer service. The results have been impressive. A J.D. Power and Associates study released in June 2005 ranked T-Mobile the wireless industry's top provider of customer satisfaction. Furthermore, employee attrition rates decreased by 50 percent. "Throughout the program implementation," says Gillespie, "T-Mobile benchmarked against the current situation and saw marked improvements in the KPI achievement across the board, especially for the mid-sixty percent customer service reps, [who had] higher scores in customer and employee satisfaction surveys.

Consumer Incentive

Traverse City Record-Eagle and NouveautesUSA: "Whole Latte News"

Every morning, many people get ready for their day with a cup of coffee and their local newspaper. With this in mind, Michigan's Traverse City Record-Eagle partnered with NouveautesUSA, the exclusive distributor of Gevalia coffee, to bring both coffee and the news to subscribers, while increasing its E-Z Pay (automatic bill payment) subscriber base. "Our goal for this campaign was to increase the number of E-Z Pay subscribers by 200 and increase the daily circulation of the newspaper," says David Little, president of West Caldwell, N.J.–based NouveautesUSA.

The plan was simple, but very effective. The "Whole Latte News" consumer offer targeted well-educated business professionals and offered them 12 packs of Gevalia coffee in return for a year-long subscription to the Record-Eagle via the E-Z pay service. The cost to the consumer: $12 per month. "Not only did we reach our goal, but we ended the three weeks with a total of 426 new E-Z Pay subscribers. We were still getting calls for days after the offer ended. By having these subscribers on E-Z Pay, [the Record-Eagle] was able to cut down the costs of collections and related bad debt."

Coffee is not the only thing that NouveautesUSA brings to the table. The company maintains inventory of the product and creates combinations and packaging unique to the incentive programs it designs and the promotional marketplace. "In this case," Little says, "we designed a house box for newspaper home delivery and did the complete fulfillment."

Little points out that the promotion also was extremely cost effective. "[The Record-Eagle] invested approximately $35 per item and received $144 in total for a twelve-month subscription. [The newspaper] did not have to abnormally discount the product, and maintained the perception of value and upscale image to its readership."

Massey Energy and Artistic Promotions, LLC: "Raymond Safety Bowl"

In the coal mines of West Virginia, safety is of utmost importance. To the employees and the companies they work for, safety can be a matter of life and death. That's why Massey Energy turned to Dunbar, W.V.–based Artistic Promotions to develop an incentive program that would motivate its work force to communicate better and practice safer work habits.

For an energy company like Massey, which is based in Chamanville, W.V., safer work habits contribute immediately to the bottom line. The average cost of a Loss Time Accident (LTA) is approximately $50,000, and safety performance is based on an LTA ratio. According to Artistic Promotions' Ryan Westerman, the goal of the program was to improve communication and increase awareness of safety-conscious habits both at work and home through the use of tools such as of banners, decals and promotional items. Massey also set out to improve company safety performance and absenteeism.

With Massey's mostly male workforce, Artistic Promotions chose to use a football theme for broad appeal. The "Raymond Safety Bowl" was named after Raymond Bradbury, a former employee who was famous for his concern for safe work habits. Artistic Promotions pumped up interest in the program by creating a caricature of Bradbury that appeared on all program material, including branded caps, footballs and T-shirts.

To emphasize the team focus of the sport, eligible employees were assigned to a team within their location, and the teams competed with each other monthly for best performance records. Points were awarded according to a three-tiered accrual system based on individual team members working a month without an LTA, whole teams working a month without an LTA, and finally the members' entire mine site working without an LTA.

Quarterly updates were sent out by mail to participants and posted on the program's Web site (www.raymondsafety.com). Points accrued were redeemable from the print and online Raymond Safety Bowl catalog. Merchandise was targeted toward the miners' tastes and included hunting and camping items, electronics and home accessories, including appliances and lawn equipment. According to Westerman, employee reaction has been outstanding. "The Massey members have really enjoyed the process and the awards they can receive based on their safety performance. They are always anxious to check their point balances and place their orders with our Award Headquarters department here at Artistic Promotions. Because the catalog is so diverse, it gives [exciting choices to] people with all kinds of interests and taste options."

For Massey Energy, the results have been remarkable as well and included a significant decrease in absenteeism and a 47 percent reduction in Loss Time Accidents over the previous year. "Having the best safety performance in the company's history was an unexpected benefit," Westerman says. "The short-term results were the safety performances by Massey members that resulted in the safest year in company history. The long-term results of the program are that Massey continues to be a leader in the industry when it comes to safety education and training," he added.

Employee Recognition

Anderson Performance Improvement Co.: "Leveraging Excellence"

Anderson Performance Improvement, a consulting firm based in Hastings, Minn., has been very successful in showing companies how they can leverage the behavior of their high performers by reproducing a leading group's behavior across the entire organization. After much success with this method, Anderson's own employees asked the firm to shine a mirror on itself to develop an internal employee motivation and recognition program. "We do behavior-based reward and recognition programs for our clients," says Louise Anderson, president and CEO. "We have a very collaborative culture, and so our employees said, 'Why don't we do this for everybody?' So we designed a company-wide incentive program and measured it against efficiency, and that means speed to delivery for our customers, on target and on budget. Even though it's our business, it's amazing when you apply [our program] to team and group dynamics how much the organization can exceed even your expectations."

In addition to awards earned for on-time, on-target and on-budget performance, employees could earn rewards through the "Focus on Goals" program, which recognized personal goals for profitable growth and through the "State Your Case" program, which rewarded participation in knowledge-sharing sessions. There are also discretionary programs in which employees were recognized by their peers, managers and even clients.

Awards can be redeemed online and include over 3,000 items in various categories that reflect the company's wide-ranging demographics. "We have a very eclectic age range and ethnic diversity in our organization," says Anderson. "[Rewards] range from gold jewelry to travel to gourmet kitchen [items] to new tires to baby cribs and bassinets."

According to Anderson, employee reaction has been positive. "When we originally set the budget we had five percent of their salary that we put in award points. Because the [program's] budget is directly tied to profitable growth, reduction in costs and those kinds of things…we're actually on track to be spending almost ten percent this year."

The company's performance improvement goals were exceeded as well. On-time, on-target and on-budget goals were met by .1 percent, 3.9 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively, over baseline figures. Furthermore, over 80 percent of Anderson's employees achieved at least one of their personal commitment goals and almost 60 percent achieved two of their goals.

Back to the Press Room Menu >