The Long-Term Benefits of Staff Incentives

December is a month many look forward to – for more reasons than one.  Aside from holiday parties and vacation time—many look forward to what the new year has in store. It  can bring new opportunities, bigger challenges, and maybe even a staff incentive or year-end bonus!

Staff incentives can be distributed for various reasons. Most are based on performance metrics but geared towards offering a token of appreciation for hard-work and dedication. While it can be a delightful surprise for employees, it can be as equally gratifying for employers. It gives them the chance to recognize outstanding achievers within the company and prove that hard work does “pay off”.  Above and beyond this, year-end incentives encourage better performance, loyalty, retention and motivation for years to come.

However many companies fail to make the most of their opportunity to create a positive impact using a bonus or incentive. According to a staffing and recruiting survey commissioned by Robert Half, only 42% of Canadian employers say they plan on forking over a year-end bonus. If everyone in the company is expecting one however, it does lose a bit of it’s charm. At Tigris, we like to do things a little different…

Awarding Top Tigris Achievers with Incentives

Tigris is not new to awarding incentives to our best staff!

Back in 2006, we distributed awards ranging from $50-$150 to staff and $500-$1000 to event management for top performance during our back to school promotion for Motorola and Rogers at The Source. The program ran for 6 weekends at 110 stores across Canada. With over 150 staff on the team, it was important for us to give our sales staff extra incentives to work hard and bring in big results. And that is exactly what they did. Over our 6 week stint, sales on the Motorola V300 lifted a wopping 70%. Our investment in approximately $5,000 in incentives from program profits was wisely used to ensure success of a monumental program – for our clients ROI and our first opportunity to prove ourselves in the national market.

After evaluating the positive response from our clients and staff alike, we continued to implement incentives on results based programs. For most of our high volume market research studies at Toronto Pearson airport, in conjunction with Hotspex, we have distributed 1st, 2nd and 3rd place incentives along with a grand prize that can tack on 10-40% more income to a staff’s pay cheque post-program. Since market research relies heavily on proactivity, the potential of extra earnings is a big draw for members on the team who work tirelessly at Canada’s largest airport to obtain the highest # of completed surveys possible. The results have been tremendous. To date, we have completed over 25 surveys at Pearson and with the exception of one pre-security study, we have consistently met or exceeded program targets, in some cases by more than a few thousand.

In addition to program to program based incentives, we also began incorporating annual incentives several years ago. Smaller programs or those focused on sampling or branding for example, make it difficult to determine incentives. They are equally important and we want to make sure that our team knows we are paying attention. We know who shows up on time consistently, responded to emails, are eager to work and show up with a smile. Pre and post event engagement is just as important to the management of our business as onsite execution.

For this year, we decided to categorize our incentives based on unique qualities rather than a first, second or third ranking as we did for our 2012 staff incentives.

We are pleased to announce that the winners of our 2013 staff incentives…………
ROCKIN’ REGIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER: Thomas from Montreal, QC. Tommy has worked with us for close to nine years and was promoted to regional account manager in January 2012. He was always a great member of our roster, but as a manager, he continues to blow us away by exceeding our expectations.This past summer, Tommy traveled across Canada to manage three activation’s for the Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver Pride Parades and did an amazing job! He executed each program flawlessly even in the midst of moving AND welcoming a new baby into his family. What a rockstar!!
EXCEPTIONAL EVENT MANAGER: Jessica from Vancouver, BC. Jessica has helped our exponentially this past year. She stepped up to manage a massive experiential undertaking for Tide Jan. 31-Feb. 4 along with several other programs including Emergen-C, Sun-Rype, and Johnsonville. She is diligent, eager and hardworking. She has been a wonderful additional to our team and never ceases to amaze us with her skills!
BEST NEW HIRE: Jammie from Calgary, AB. Jammie may be new to our roster but she isn’t new to proving continued excellence program after program. We’ve found Jammie to be the most proactive and positive events staff on our Calgary team. She has been an absolute pleasure to work with and has even gone above and beyond to help our recruiting efforts. She is a star and we recognize her as a top performer after working with us for less than one year!
VERSATILE VIXEN: Gabrielle from Toronto, ON. Gabrielle has been on our roster for 3 years and has worked for a range of clients including Appleton Rum, Canadian Tire and many others. She is always happy to work, versatile in her skills and a total bombshell! Clients from all industries request Gabrielle to work and it’s no wonder why!

All of the winners of our staff incentive awards will receive a $75 pre-paid credit card to put towards whatever they like!