Reward Is Important To You

Chances are your pension pot is currently not as large as that of Sir Fred Goodwin. There’s every chance that the people in your team earn less than £1m a year too. So it’s likely that the fairness of your reward and recognition scheme is not the subject of debate on news shows and in the newspapers.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t the subject of debate in lunch queues, at the coffee machine, in the pub or over the kitchen table. People get passionate about how success is rewarded and the consequences of failure, as well as how people who coast are recognised as coasters. It’s not about the size of the payouts, although that does make reward newsworthy, for most people the important factor is the perceived fairness of reward.

Designing reward and recognition systems, particularly in sales teams, can be a minefield, and often causes as much resentment and frustration as it does motivation and enthusiasm. Some are carefully thought out and meticulously planned but fail to recognise that people need to quickly understand what they need to do to succeed. Others make success criteria really clear but remain vague about how many jelly beans will be available if people jump high enough to grab them. Some are highly transparent, but perceived as unfair if certain territories or customer groups mean some people will always be rewarded whilst others have little hope.