157: Employee Incentives and Unintended Consequences

Today we discuss employee incentives and how they can actually work against our long-term goals.

Employee incentives gone rogue!

It’s very common for companies to incentivize goals like sales quotas, new customer acquisition, and more. And while it’s great to reward employees for reaching these goals, the way we do it can create huge problems.

Take Wells Fargo, who is facing multiple lawsuits due to the creation of millions of fake accounts resulting from years of aggressive acquisition quotas. While this is an extreme case, the problems created by your incentive program can go unnoticed until there’s a huge problem.

The biggest problems we hear of stem from focusing on metrics rather than experience outcomes. For instance, your report may show a significantly reduced call time, but it will not tell you how many calls were hastily and poorly executed. It won't say how many customer service issues were ignored to keep those calls short.

Will your employees turn against each other to reach your new sales goal? Will your loyal customers suffer due to an emphasis on acquisition? From making undeliverable promises to creating deeply embedded culture issues, your long-term goals and reputation could be at stake.

Listen in to learn how the best companies think ahead by aligning employee incentives with experience outcomes.

 

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