Gary Brose, author of "Bonus Your Way to Profits!", has some unique first-hand insights into motivating employees and energizing the workforce. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 9 of his book about how to design bonus programs.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENT #5

"M" IS FOR MEANINGFUL!

1. Having meaning, function, or purpose.

2. Fraught with meaning; significant: A meaningful glance. A meaningful amount.

Your bonus program must be Meaningful!

Ok, Gary, so what does that really mean? Well, in the case of bonus programs, your program must be meaningful on two levels: First, it must be pertinent to the role of the employee and, second, it must involve bonus dollars that are large enough to be considered significant.

What is Meaningful?

Lets tackle the first issue: The bonus must be pertinent to the employee’s role. In other words, it must be relevant to the tasks that the employee typically performs. For example, you would never hold a sales rep responsible for minimizing waste in the manufacturing process. You know that would be silly. The sales rep has no ability to impact that issue. Yet, many companies will give profit share bonuses to everyone in the company including the mailroom intern. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time believing that the mailroom intern can affect Corporate profit in any MEANINGFUL way. The key here is to avoid the situation where you are handing out bonuses based on the theory that everyone can GENERALLY affect profits. Not good enough. The employee gets paid but the company gets very little in return. In order for the company to see a return on the fruits of its bonus programs, the key bonus issues need to be specific to the employees’ tasks. In the case of the mailroom clerk, you would want to identify which task he or she performs frequently that actually has an impact on operational efficiency or corporate profits.

For the second issue, the rule of thumb is more obvious. The bonus needs to be large enough to get the employees’ attention. It must be a large enough percentage of their base pay to create the proper concern and incentive.

Why does it need to be meaningful?

Let’s look at the reasons:

1. Keep the big picture in mind. You want to create a bonus program that returns value to both the employee AND the company. It would be nice not to forget the customers along the way too. You cannot get that mutual or three-way satisfaction without drilling down to the pertinent core functions. In order to get the return for the company, the "good action" that you want to reward has to be something that occurs fairly often. Analyze each job and identify that activity.

2. Empowering employees is a powerful tool for you. Employees do not feel empowered when they are being judged on things they cannot control. You don’t want to create victims here. Give them the opportunities to be Captains of their own Ship! Morale rises with that tide.

3. When the bonus amount is high enough to become significant in the employees’ eyes, attitudes change. People become more concerned about the company’s success because of enlightened self-interest. Anytime you can tie the company’s success to the employees’ success, it is a big win. When the sense of self-fulfillment is gained through success on the job, the employer wins.

4. A high bonus payout can become a great enticement for applicants and job hunters. When you develop a reputation as a company that rewards its people fairly and appropriately, you will attract a higher quality of job applicants. Since, in most cases, you are only as good as your people, this becomes more significant to long-term success.

For more details on how to change your corporate culture and re-energize your employees go to www.motivatedworker.com or visit my website at www.smallbizsherpa.com.

MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES!