Fine-Tuning Your Goals & Incentives Program at Your Bank or Credit Union

Upgrade your goals and incentive program with consolidation and automation.

Are you wondering if employee goals and incentive programs make a substantive difference? It’s a fair question. They do, and they do it in a couple of important ways. Forbes explains, “Incentives and recognition programs help employees remain connected and engaged with their workplaces, offering motivation, which in turn, results in enhanced productivity and performance.” It’s not hard to see from there the connection between engaged, productive employees and the bottom line. In a survey of US bankers, 84% of respondents who currently have an employee incentive plan in place said their incentive plan has increased sales within their organization and increased employee engagement by encouraging better profiling, cross-selling, and referrals to other lines of business.

Banks and credit unions set goals and create incentives to reach those goals every year for their institutions; not all of them afford the same focus for employee goals and incentives. If that’s you, it’s time for a change.

Here are four ways to fine tune your employee goals and incentives program.

1. Set Clear Goals

When employees have clear goals and incentives, they can develop a stronger dedication to their jobs and allegiance to their employers. Be sure to make goals simple and straight-forward. Often focusing on product-specific goals can yield the best results. For example, a certain number of commercial or retail accounts opened per branch per week is a focused, measurable goal. Connecting these specific goals to your institution’s larger efforts is also important. As you’re building a plan for your organization, make sure incentives match profitable products (or lines of business) and align with your current and long-term business goals.

2. Consolidate Goals and Incentives Planning/Tracking into One System

Offering easily accessible tracking and feedback for goals and incentives is a must. For employees to be able to see their progress and reminders of end goals in a central location increases motivation. From Forbes again, “For easy accessibility, it’s important to provide all such information in one place, where individuals can track their progress and performance when they need to.” For example, for tracking employee performance, the 360 View CRM Platform offers a Goals and Incentives module that monitors new deposit account openings, closed loans, or other metrics you may have in place and can track incentive payouts associated with these metrics. Having this information readily available is one way to be transparent with your employees about your expectations for the program. It also helps ensure the program remains top of mind for them.

3. Offer Real-Time Results Using Automation

In addition to setting up the consolidated location for goals and incentives, consider adopting a system that allows you to track progress in real time. This type of live feedback keeps motivation in play. If their progress updates are always in front of them, team members are more likely to work toward performance improvement and sales growth. Waiting days or weeks to determine if a sent referral has closed or resulted in new business is an energy damper. Manual tracking often works that way. On the other hand, automating the tracking of referrals from origin to close enables accurate and timely results to reach employees and offer immediate feedback on their progress. With real-time results, they’ll always know where they stand and can stay motivated to accomplish their final goals.

4. Be Creative with Rewards

Money is certainly a motivator, but sometimes experiences are a more powerful incentive, and often more memorable. Before you dangle the $100 bill, consider reward incentives like free lessons for favorite hobbies (e.g., singing lessons, language lessons, bowling lessons, etc.), event tickets, free breakfast brought to your office for a week, or the leadership team washes cars for a day. Monetary rewards certainly work, but sometimes team members can become used to the cash reward, and the times they don’t achieve it can leave them feeling cheated out of expected pay. Rewards that include team members and particularly ones that create unique moments are often the ones they remember six months later and thus can be deeper motivators.

There’s a lot that goes into creating a comprehensive goals and incentives program, and it’s important to regularly assess if yours is working effectively. Happy, motivated employees will deliver better customer service and higher performance overall, leading to revenue growth and improved business operations. The key to this success is empowering your employees with clear goals and consolidated, real-time actionable insight into their progress toward their individual and the organizational goals. As you fine-tune this system, it’s also important to not lose sight of your people and what are their best reward motivators. There’s no question that banks and credit unions with happy employees perform better as whole.

The 360 View CRM Platform

The newest breed of CRM solutions has finally made this goal and incentive process manageable: the latest technology can help you build a customized incentive plan, make it easy for your employees to track results, and automate reports so that you can re-adjust right away. Schedule a demo today to see how 360 View’s Goals and Incentives module can support your bank or credit union.