How Can I Create an Effective Incentive Plan to Motivate and Retain Retail Employees?

Hi,

I am a new member to this site. I have to create an incentive plan for the employees working in a retail outlet. How can I plan it? What are the major things that I need to keep in mind? The incentive plan should be helpful in motivating and retaining the employees.

Sapna

Hi Sapna,

For designing an incentive scheme for retail salesmen, it is necessary to know their jobs well, since they are the contact points with customers. I guess informal feedback from regular customers might help you. There must be some targets that need to be fulfilled by each of the salespersons; incentives can be based on that too. Incentives can also be based on promotional activities, loyalty towards the organization, giving suggestions that the company feels are appropriate to implement, and the list goes on.

For any specific queries, you can always ask.

Best regards,
Shrawani
MBA-HR

Dear all,

An incentive is something that is given to an employee based on their OUT OF THE BOX work. I have an idea; let's see if it works.

1) Set up benchmarks for the employees; remember, DON'T use a divide and rule policy here.

2) The incentives depend on the payment given to the employees. If the salary is high, then the incentives should be different. For instance, the top performer will get an opportunity to have dinner at one of the 3-star hotels, while the second top performer will get a chance to dine with the management at any hotel.

3) If the employees are given a low salary, then we should ensure that we provide incentives in monetary terms.

4) Suppose a person who receives an incentive this month. Increase their target, but give them a challenge with high incentives only on the condition that they become a mentor for other juniors whom they have to groom and develop as shooters in retail sales. Only then will they qualify for incentives.

5) Here, we would have tenured employees with competency not only in their work but also in how they can develop other junior mentees. This will help us minimize inventories and maximize profits.

Regards and thanks,

Samir Kulkarni

Whether you like my advice or not, please reply and let me know if you have any better suggestions. Give me a chance to learn.

Hi Sapna,

Besides the ideas outlined by Shrawani, keep in mind that different people value different things because of factors such as their age, needs, status, etc. However, there should be monetary as well as non-monetary incentives to motivate and retain employees, like money, gift vouchers, pay hikes or merit pay, praises, or a better assignment could be given, flexibility in hours of work, extended vacation time. All the above will entirely depend upon your budget allocation, obviously!

Good day,

Is it possible for any member to share the performance-linked incentive policy for a business manager (unit head)?

Regards,
Anjali

Hi,

I agree with all the above posts. Each and every employee has different priorities, comes from a different walk of life, and has a different value system. So, the incentive system, though it can be generally drafted, execution needs refinement staying in tune with the changing structure of the organization. Monetary rewards, other schemes like a token of appreciation, dining with superiors, or even a certificate of appreciation on the organization's notice board can go a long way in motivating the employees. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Ramesh.R

Thanks, guys for the wonderful ideas and inputs.

In the case of retail sales staff, we can quantify their work, but when it comes to HR, Finance, Merchandiser, operations, how can we devise an incentive plan?

Please help!!!

Please search the web, and you might find discussions such as the one at [link no longer exists - removed].