I recently watched the rerun of the “incentive” episode of the“The Office” on NBC. Goodness, I’m going to miss that show!
While I was watching, I couldn’t help but notice another great lesson from the episode. Yes, everyone was inspired to win the grand prize. The Grand Prize was Andy Bernard (the manager) agreeing to tattoo himself with something regrettable, but what really got the office going was the fact that only as a TEAM could they achieve this goal.
As many of you know, I specialize in channel incentive programs and work with around many world-class channel organizations around the Globe. We have seen a recent trend and request to offer the functionality for teams or business partners to pool their points to earn rewards as a team. There are number of reasons for this request:
1.) The business partner principal wants to have control or visibility into what the vendors are offering their employees.
2.) The sale is complex and takes a team to identify, qualify, spec, present, and implement, and therefore it takes a team to close. In the tech world we see a lot of VAR sales and sales engineers working together for a joint sales effort.
3.) A cultural norm dictates that individual rewards are not feasible. In a number of our programs in countries like Japan it is not appropriate to reward one person for a clear group effort. In this case the manager would pool the team’s points.
Our client’s teams don’t have the option of tattooing their boss, but we are seeing teams redeem for a group incentive travel event, ping pong tables for the office, loge suites at an NFL game, or group experiences like Richard Petty Driving Camp or an afternoon with a golf pro. Not only are these rewards memorable, but they continue to build a team atmosphere for the company and help to foster relationships beyond the workplace that have been shown to positively impact productivity.
As usual, send me a note with your experience or thought on team incentives!
Move the Channel,
Travis