Offering people a reward for doing something that needs to get done can help the process get completed faster, more accurately and with greater results. This is the core belief behind incentive compensation management, and a tenant of motivational tactics in sales departments for years. As more companies find themselves in need of these kinds of solutions, incentive compensation is branching out into whole new sectors in order to get the exemplary performances out of employees that businesses demand.
Working toward new goals
One key area trying to get more out of their workforce through incentivization is the healthcare industry. This sector is required to get all of its operations into digital resources by as early as the beginning of 2012, but many of these landmarks were not met and continue to remain outstanding. In order to force healthcare providers to get started and catch up on their progress, the U.S. government has begun offering providers incentive compensation for meeting their goals in a more timely fashion.
Unfortunately, despite adding financial rewards and other benefits, only 10 percent of all providers have yet to meet the first milestone for establishing meaningful use. That's only the first step in a much longer process, and with such a small number of firms meeting the requirements, it's important for the government and firms themselves to determine why the system isn't working.
Making important discoveries
This is similar to a traditional sales compensation strategy that any department manager would have to deal with. In these cases, assessing an incentive plan can help weed out the issues common among these kinds of offerings, since simply putting a reward system in place doesn't mean it will generate results.
The Society for Human Resources Management wrote that companies should be sure that their incentive compensation plans are in line with the goals those bonuses are intended to make personnel reach. If there aren't clear objectives or the plan lacks a final goal for why personnel should be working harder, apart from making more money, it's unlikely that such strategies will have the big payoffs organizations need in order to deem these initiatives successful. What's more, by sharing the success of some employees with the whole company and acknowledging their efforts, these plans gain more visibility and popularity. Creating a sales incentive plan needs to have all of these elements present and working together in order to foster success.
