Incentives: Poorly constructed plans make business fail

This post originally appeared at petechristianbooks.com

Attracting and retaining the top talent is an important priority for companies.

In that regard, employee incentive programs are a popular strategy. While incentive programs can be incredibly effective, if they are not devised and employed properly, they can do more harm than good to the company. That is why poorly constructed plans make business fail. They also reflect your organizational values.

Poorly constructed plans are what makes a business fail.

One company I worked with didn’t properly utilize an incentive system. They had 22 stations set up to manufacture its product. Work was divided among the stations and the product moved from station to station every four hours. That meant that the work at each station had to be balanced, so it took no longer than four hours to complete the tasks assigned at each station. If that did not happen there was a delay in the entire plant until the slow station completed its work. Or, the item was moved to the next station with work still left to be done.

The labor estimated and budgeted for each custom item was set exactly the same. That is not right. Custom means doing something different with varying items that…