Internal misalignment often begins with a lack of a strategic vision, while clarity starts with a clear sales, marketing and loyalty strategy. Developing a cohesive strategy educates the entire company on the expectations. A clear and complete vision of the program will pre-empt a “let’s-slash-the-loyalty-budget” attitude. Educating company stakeholders is an ongoing process. Like anything else, if they don’t understand its value, you are not going to get their buy-in.

A GOOD PLACE TO START IS TO IDENTIFY A NUMBER OF COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS;

In designing employee recognition programs, it is imperative to be very specific about the kind of behaviours that you want your associates to display (and get rewarded for). Many of our clients make the mistake of relating their incentives to broad and generic corporate values. Instead, the specs are important, as they make for easier and more transparent reward criteria. Also, do consider recognizing your operational managers. For many customer-facing employees, their supervisor, team leader or store manager is a role model who they look to for guidance on good practice.