Incentive - September 2008 - (Page 42) Figuring out the price of all the disparate programs in place was a serious fact-finding effort that took six months to a year to complete, and when the final sum was tallied, a few leaders were somewhat surprised by the amount. “When they originally started looking at the programs, they thought that they were spending around $100,000 [annually],” says Anthony Luciano, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Statesville, N.C.–based The TharpeRobbins Company, which had been running CocaCola’s length-of-service awards. “They kept looking and they found that they were spending about $200,000. They kept looking and two hundred became almost $500,000, which became $1 million and ultimately over $2 million. They just kept finding ways in which people were recognized and they just had no way to manage and track that.” Ceravalo presented his findings to the company leadership, recommending that a more formal program be developed with clear metrics. Working with executives from every department, Ceravalo helped develop a comprehensive, company-wide incentive program, tapping TharpeRobbins to help run it. The result was SPARC Rewards. The SPARC Rewards ROI Model Data from a recent sales incentive shows how Coca-Cola Bottling now calculates its incentive ROI. Simplification, Prioritization, Accountability, Recognition and Celebration. The program functions through an online platform developed with TharpeRobbins. Employees are awarded SPARC Cards (logoed Visa gift cards) or SPARC Points when they are nominated by their superiors. An employee can also award SPARC Points to his or her coworkers as part of a peer-topeer program. These can be redeemed for merchandise, travel experiences and Visa gift cards. This system includes virtually every department and office, rewarding the wide range of behaviors the company had been incentivizing previously, but through a consistent, centralized program that allows team leaders and the executive team to have access to the reports of how many dollars are going where. As Luciano explains, “the two biggest things that they came back to were trackability and accountability.” Sales, customer satisfaction, safety, wellness, training, stewardship, and a number of other awards are all tracked through SPARC, with each program tailored to offer the right rewards for the particular behaviors. Nor is the Coca-Cola Bottling Company finished developing SPARC. A wellness program, which awards individuals for participating in Weight Watchers and similar programs, is under development after one of of the company’s locations decided to do a “Biggest Loser”-style Generate Impact Study (Completed after first full year of program) STA RT Develop Program (sales volume increase at Location A) Calculate the ROI (Additional Sales: $14,720 Program Cost: $3,065 ROI: $4.80 benefit for every $1.00 invested as well as intangible benefits) Develop Implementation Plan (launch 2/08) Convert Data to M o n e t a r y Va l u e s (generated $14,720 in additional sales) Collect Data During Implementation (3,331,860 units sold 2/07 - 7/07) Isolate Effects of P r o g r a m (4,950case sales increase after neutralizing external factors) Collect Data After Implementation (3,412,810 units sold 2/08 - 7/08) A Comprehensive System SPARC Rewards actually consists of a number of programs under the same banner that award different behaviors (such as sales or efficiency) on differing timelines (some are short-term programs, others are ongoing), but all aim for the same qualities that the letters of “SPARC” stand for: program for delivery truck drivers. They were put in teams and the group that lost the most collective weight was awarded SPARC points. “When they get in teams, you start seeing some results, and interesting competitiveness, like one team bringing donuts in just to tempt the others,” says Ceravalo. The program was a huge success, with participants losing an average of 10 pounds per individual. The SPARC incentive was clearly making an impact, and Ceravalo says that after the results they were able to measure in this program, the company will be rolling out more competition-based programs next year. Getting Everyone On Board Changes of this magnitude are bound to face some pushback, and Ceravalo acknowledges that his group worked through some initial resistance, particularly from the team leaders who had been with the company for decades and were skeptical. To help alleviate some of these concerns, Ceravalo’s team first emphasized that the SPARC Rewards program was not about cutting costs on incentives—they pledged to spend the same substantial amount under SPARC that they had been spending in previous years—but about ensuring that the awards were adding value back to the organization either from an economic gain or through increased employee engagement, and that the maximum number of employees were being touched by the program. At the same time, Coca-Cola Bottling Company’s leadership built a level of independence for each of the groups into the program, allowing 42 | Incentive | September 2008 | incentivemag.com http://incentivemag.com
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.