Latest IRF Paper Focuses on Motivating Today's Workforce

Just as the workforce has shifted during the past two to three decades into a predominately white collar/knowledge work environment, so too have opinions about how best to motivate workers. The latest paper from the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), “Motivating Today’s Workforce: The Future of Incentive and Recognition Program Design,“ examines the current impact of incentives, reward, and recognition programs on motivation and provides tips on how designers can best create effective programs.

The research authors—Allan Schweyer, chairman, Enterprise Engagement Alliance, and Rodger Stotz, chief research officer, IRF— analyzed input from more than 50 incentive experts and hundreds of secondary research and related resources to identify the “state-of-the-art” in program design and the use of incentives and recognition to motivate today’s workforce.

Nearly all of the experts interviewed agreed that “however one designs an incentive, reward, or recognition program, one must apply proven, effective design principles by providing ongoing communications, collecting key metrics throughout, measuring business impact where appropriate, and systematically monitoring, adjusting, and improving the program.”

“One of the most significant findings uncovered in this study is that companies that plan to implement programs need to carefully consider the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in an organization’s total rewards strategy to determine the appropriateness each has to workers in different jobs,” says IRF President Melissa Van Dyke. “As workforce composition shifts to more knowledge workers, we find rewards that celebrate the mastery of a skill and the personal innovations exhibited along the way are an effective way to promote worker creativity and share best practices.”

The paper gives incentive and reward program designers eight key recommendations:

1. Taking advantage of guidelines and models, such as the Performance Improvement by Incentives (PIBI) model as program checklists
2. Clearly articulating what the program is trying to achieve
3. Thinking about the program context
4. Exploring unintended consequences and potential adverse effects of poorly designed programs
5. Balancing the program with existing key performance drivers
6. Integrating communications, assuring well-planned implementation and executing ongoing refinement opportunities
7. Building in metrics and ROI measures from the beginning
8. Defining what the terms “incentive” and “recognition” mean to an organization

To downloaded a copy of the report, visit www.theirf.org.