If you are trying to increase your employee motivation, make sure you don't achieve the opposite. Sometimes, a well-intentioned incentive program may completely destroy the motivation of your team
The use of incentives to address the wrong problem
A typical example - revenues are falling, because the product is becoming obsolete. Incorrect solution: We will increase the bonus for selling more products. Employees see the paradox, and they don't understand why management would not rather focus on upgrading the product. Well-performing employees will leave sooner or later.
An incentive program for a narrow group of employees
If 95% of your people are performing well and you create an incentive program for the remaining five percent, you are likely to upset all 100% of your employees.
Set incentives, which require the use questionable practices in order to reach them
You could ask doctors at a hospital to inspect more patients within a certain time span. The result is usually a temporary increase in productivity, but the subsequent drop in quality - which can have serious consequences not only in the case of poor human health inspection. Good employees can see that such incentives are absurd and, at best, they return to their former practice.
-th-