We Believe What We Hear

Designing an incentive program is more than just identifying a goal and issuing awards when that goal is achieved.  There are other elements that influence the behavior of your target audience.  One of the most important is the communication element.  I’ve touched on this element before.  I’m a big believer in communicating within a program to drive more results.

But I don’t mean simply communicating the rules and the rewards – I mean communicating the successes of the program.  Highlighting the people that are hitting their goals and putting a face behind the statistics is important.  Too many program simply put the stats on the board but don’t go into any detail about the how those stats came to be.  I thought about this the other day when I got an RSS feed from The Tom Peters Weblog with this little tidbit…(link to site)

What I thought about was – most people if you asked them would say that Trump was a success.  But if you look at the statistics – he doesn’t seem that successful.  However, the amount of publicity he puts out about his empire communicates a different message.  The fact that there is positive PR about Mr. Trump has a lot of people believing something that isn’t true. 

I think that works in reverse for incentive programs.  Keep the communication going about the positive aspects of the program.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  And the behavior will change.

I remember a boss I worked for a long time ago saying he could design a program without awards but a great communication strategy – and get as much behavior change as a program with great awards and mediocre communications plan.  I would agree.

A great program has both awards and communications. 

The message of this post… to all those clients who see Communications as a line item to cut when putting your budget together for your next program – don’t!  Cut the awards a little and put that extra money into a positive PR campaign around the program.  That will drive more results than the extra money in the awards budget.

And I’ll leave you with words of Johnny Mercer…

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between