Building your employee engagement plan

So, you want to get ready to design an employee engagement plan – or perhaps it is time to re-architect your existing one from the ground up. After some initial discussions with your managers and peers, the need is clearly there – or is it? You know you will have to secure higher engagement levels across the breadth of the organization, and executive sponsorship will be critical for a successful launch. But you’re in a hyper-competitive market and time is of the essence; you need to speed things up…now!

Align the employee engagement plan to your organization

Rather than jumping right into planning program tactics, business rules, participant messaging, and brainstorming the next big idea regarding the perfect reward or venue, start by asking why do you need an incentive program at all? What is it that needs to change, and how should you align your resources to achieve the greatest impact.  After all,  when it comes to creating a successful engagement plan, you need to ensure that you have a clear plan, an aligned team, and prepared answers to the questions below:

1. What is the business problem you are trying to solve?  Or,  to put it another way,  what’s the business outcome you are trying to effect?
2. Who are the participants that will comprise your primary, sand tertiary audiences?
3. What is the business case for running this program?  What is the ROI?
4. Who are the key internal and external stakeholders that will ‘make or break’ your program and how do you engage them during the planning, design and support stages?
5. How will you measure success and leverage analytics to continuously improve program efficacy?

The decision to implement a new or redesigned incentive program is often easy – compelled either by demonstrated success of an existing program, the need to reward new behaviors, or by competitive drivers in the market. The path to a successful launch, however, is often not as clear as is the business need and requires a well thought out employee engagement plan that defines pain points and identifies a core team to collaborate on addressing those challenges. This game plan will assist you in the planning process that will ultimately lead to your success. By addressing organizational alignment upfront, the program can avoid the many speed bumps that often arise –particularly when launching a new incentive program.

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About the Author

Engaging employees of various backgrounds, interests, and generations may seem next to impossible. As an employer you want to reward your workers on an individual and meaningful level for reaching business goals, but may not have the time or knowledge to do so. If your organization is suffering in the areas of: retention, attracting new talent, low satisfaction, or safety issues among others, consider partnering with Perks. By pairing our Science of Motivation™ methodology with your unique business needs, our incentive programs have a proven track record of strengthening all areas of employee engagement, most importantly: productivity and ROI. Our programs provide unique employee engagement solutions by rewarding workers based on performance. Whether rewarding an employee for going above and beyond, referring new talent, or taking the necessary steps to prevent workplace accidents, Perks will work with you to design the ultimate incentive program to meet your needs.

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