Incentive - March 2008 - (Page 24)

INTERVIEW By Alex Palmer ANSWERING The Right Question Paul Levesque says there’s more to motivation than rewards P 24 | Incentive aul Levesque has strong opinions about what motivates employees. Drawing on two decades of experience as an international business consultant, he has developed a clear view about what is effective and what is not for businesses looking to boost worker enthusiasm, building an entire system and vocabulary around his ideas about effective management. And he has some choice words about many corporate incentive programs. “This is what I see again and again: I ask the executive team, ‘What are you investing in motivation?’ And they outline for me their nine-year program to invest x-billions in incentive programs, and I say, ‘How’s it working for you?’” says Levesque. “[And they say] ‘Not good—here’s the chart, here’s our morale. It remains bad, our employee | March 2008 | incentivemag.com turnover remains high. Our turnover costs are sky-high and it hasn’t really changed.’ And yet they dare not stop doing that because it’s all they know how to do, and if they stop they feel it will be even worse.” In Motivation (Entrepreneur Press, 2007), Levesque’s fifth book, he warns against illconceived merchandise and travel incentives. He describes how they can easily turn into “cynicism intensifiers” that are likely to get workers focused on winning prizes instead of delivering their best performance. So why is Incentive interviewing someone critical of the industry? According to Levesque, it’s not that incentives in and of themselves don’t work, it’s that companies use them to answer a question that employees aren’t really asking. “I don’t believe that employees have the burning question in the back of their minds of ‘What’s in it for me?’” says Levesque. “The question in the back of the minds of employees is ‘Why should I care?’ It sounds like it’s the same question. It’s not.” As Levesque sees it, incentives breed cynicism when they are offered as buy-offs for employees to do work that offers little other value to them, when they are meant to appeal to self-interest and not much else. Levesque says that employees are motivated less by a paycheck or material rewards than they are by a sense of higher purpose and relevance in the work they do. It’s not that rewards don’t have a place in a welldesigned incentive program, he says, it’s that the rewards won’t be successful if they are not part of a well-designed, complementary recognition program. Much of this sense of higher purpose comes from positive feedback from http://incentivemag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - March 2008

Incentive - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: Delivering on Diversity In The News Cover Story: Leveraging Diversity in the Workplace Incentive Interview: Paul Levesque on Why Awards Fail Case Study: AEIS’ Max!-imum Incentive Program Mine Employees’ Creativity with Innovation Incentives Incentive Must-Reads The Third Annual Gift Card Roundtable My Turn: Motivation or Bribery? Everybody Get Together In Her Shoes: Why Bosses Should Be Flexible Incentive Primer: Passport Problem-Solving potentials Here and Now Is CES Electronics Heaven? China and Crystal: More Than a Pretty Face Travel News Florida: What’s New on the Beach? Smooth Sailing for Incentive Cruising Come To Hawaii And Take It Fast Last Word: But Enough About You

Incentive - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.