Focus through Incentives

A rose by any other name may still be a rose –
But incentive plans are not all the same.

A number of consulting companies design incentive plans. What distinguishes a Humaneered plan? The differences are significant -- both to your company's financial outcomes and to your culture.

A Humaneered incentive plan is self-funded from the financial value it adds to your company. It's not an "extra" cost that ultimately subtracts from your bottom line. After all, the purpose of an incentive plan is to increase behavior that improves the bottom line. If it doesn't, why are you paying an incentive in the first place?!

A Humaneered incentive plan is grounded in respect for employees. It doesn't attempt to manipulate employees into mindlessly "giving their all." That's pretty hard to do, anyway. People need to understand the connection between what they're doing and how it impacts company success in order to know how and when to "give their all."

A Humaneered incentive plan is transparent. Employees fully understand how the plan works, how the incentives relate to the company's financial success, and how the incentives relate to their own financial success. With this information, employees can make the right decisions about what they need to do in each moment, regardless of changing circumstances.

When you treat employees as active partners in your business, they become active partners. The result is consistent and increasing positive financial outcomes. Properly constructed and implemented incentive plans enable employees at all levels to make decisions that help your business – and themselves – thrive.

Humaneering^® International builds all its plans based on five principles of human nature:

Human nature is reasonably constant
People want to belong
People want to contribute
People want to be recognized
People want to control their own destiny

This table provides additional information about differences between Humaneering's approach to incentivizing employees and that of many other consultants.

Element	Humaneered Plans	Many Other Plans
Criteria for initiating incentive	Data-driven financial model	Belief that improvement will positively impact outcomes
Methodology for achieving improvement	Build focused employee engagement that results in “ownership” behavior	Tell people what they need to do
Employee focus	The value of their efforts to the success of the organization and the resulting impact on self and others	Incentivized output and its impact on personal finances
Target	Emphasis on group members, occasionally individuals in leadership roles - all firmly anchored to company goals	All employees (general gainsharing) - downside: no individual accountability Individuals (achievement of individual goals) - downside: achieve personal goals without regard to company goals
Flexibility	Easily changed to support changing strategies and tactics of the organization	Changes may be very difficult once expectations are associated with the work
Funding	Self-funded from financial value added	Funded from incentive compensation budget
Stakeholders	Anyone with line-of-sight impact on outcomes	Frequently limited to management, who is identified as the "real driver" of production, overlooking the impact of front-line employees on success
Sense of impact on/ control of own destiny	Impact of actions and financial outcomes are clearly visible to employees	Impact of activity is rarely visible to employees, understanding of financial impact is even more rare
Ease of administration	Uses existing technology systems and data	Often requires new technology systems and data
Time to implement	6-8 wks	8 – 16 wks – or much longer

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For more information, contact info@humaneering.com,
call us at 864-271-1630, or visit us at
135 S. Main Street, Greenville, South Carolina 29601