Incentives

Cheesy Seven Year Old Video to Understand Employee Incentives

By November 11, 2019 February 5th, 2020 No Comments
Snowfly Cheesy Video Employee Incentives

I found this seven year old, new-to-me, video that does a great job explaining the what and how and why of Snowfly Incentives.  Enjoy the background music and cheesy acting… below the video is my commentary:

In the title slide it says we are “inspiring performance and loyalty.” It’s critical that we, as managers and leaders, inspire rather than force or coerce. I remember a walk-through of a funded startup. Beautiful building, lots of work space, lots of windows, lots of huge monitors… and lots of zombie-like employees. This place seemed lifeless and dark, even with all the windows.

Inspiring comes from giving hope. If your “incentives” program doesn’t inspire, through hope, with things the employees really care about, your incentives program will not last. Inspiring is not tricking. It is genuine.

Performance has been a hot topic in the HR space for years. Even back in this 2012 video we were talking about it. And “loyalty?” That could have easily said “employee retention.” This commercial directly addresses the high cost and headache of turnover.

“What used to be this: (“YEAH! New sales record!”) is now this: (“YEAH: New high score!”). Allan’s employee performance is a problem… but the root of the problem is critical to understand. The narrator says:

“A good employee not recognized accordingly is not a good employee for long.”

“Despite his hard work and effort, the incentives put in place by his employer tended to reward only the best of the best.” Speaking of inspiration and hope, if people on your team do not feel like rewards are achievable, because they will never be at the top of performance charts, they will stop trying. Why try if you know that someone else is going to get the reward and recognition, even if you worked harder or smarter, or added more value?

“Or worse, he received rewards that felt arbitrary, disconnected from his performance.” I’m sure you have seen rewards that are meaningless. Maybe they mean something to the boss, but in your world, at your income level, meeting your needs, the reward is completely useless. I have gotten rid of coffee grinders (I don’t use them) and other useless things I’ve been rewarded with that just add clutter to my life.

Snowfly IncentivesMy son was in summer sales and a few weeks ago we got two big packages delivered to our door. Two pieces of luggage… shiny, new, but we already have a dozen in our basement. Getting this luggage, weeks and weeks after he got home, was dumb. Now we are like “what do we do with this additional clutter?” Talk about arbitrary and disconnected.

And then, at minute 1:51: “… and now positive reinforcement of good conduct…” This is so critical! In the five love languages you might put that under words of affirmation. People need to feel recognized for the good that they do! If we do not do that, it can easily go “from bad to worse.”

“Now Allan does just enough to get by.”

Why? Because there is no recognition, no meaningful incentive, no inspiration, and no hope. Hopelessness lead to lower performance, which results in lost money and maybe lost customers.

“Snowfly provides a unique incentive management system that…”

Here’s something you might have mentally brushed over: Did you know that Snowfly’s greatest competitor is the company who hires from one to four full time employees to manage an incentives program? The cost associated with a manual system to manage incentives is too great, especially considering there are tools like Snowfly to easily handle this. It’s almost like telling your payroll staff to get paper and calculators and checkbooks and process payroll by hand from now on! Seriously. The tools are here, and they are affordable. But don’t get rid of those full time employees. Put them on other projects that bring higher value to your team than doing mundane (and complex) tasks Snowfly can automatically and easily handle.

While the screenshots towards the end of this commercial are outdated (hey, this video is seven years old :p), the principles of incentives, recognition, and employee performance have remained unchanged. And it’s true… at the end, we have said and continue to say that we are dedicated to “inspire your employees to be great!”

“I have a concert to go to, thanks to Snowfly of course!”

You might have missed the reference on this, since the commercial just brushed over it. The narrator is going to a concert and shows his tickets. This alludes to the narrator earning prizes or rewards… in this case, tickets to a concert. There are a bunch of rewards programs we plug into, the most popular of which are the completely versatile and useful Amazon gift cards and rechargeable Visa cards.

So yeah, the cheese is dripping off of this commercial, but the great thing about what we do is that it is principle-based. What was relevant seven years ago (or twenty years ago, when Snowfly was founded) is still relevant. People want to be heard, they want to have hope, they want to be appropriately rewarded. These have to do with performance and retention and satisfaction.

That’s the business we are in. We hope you are in that business, too.

Ready to see how Snowfly can add value to your organization?

Give us a call and let’s get on a demo.

Jason Alba

Jason Alba

I'm passionate about building great cultures. I love respect in the workforce, especially respect that is earned. I love strategic management, leadership, and vision. I love healthy companies through profitability. I love employee engagement, employee performance, and employee satisfaction. I love how Snowfly can help YOUR organization work towards all of these things.

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