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 11 of his book about how to design bonus programs.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENT #7

"R" IS FOR REINFORCED!

1. to strengthen; make more forcible or effective: to reinforce efforts.

2. to augment; increase: to reinforce a supply.

3. Psychology. to strengthen the probability of (a response to a given stimulus) by giving or withholding a reward.

Your bonus program must be Reinforced!

Think of reinforcement in this context as a reminder. But more like a reminder on steroids….a sort of "in your face" reminder that keeps the bonus plan in the employees’ upper consciousness.

What is reinforcement?

Reinforcement is simply a series of gentle and maybe, not-so-gentle, reminders to the work force that there is a bonus program in place and they should be thinking about it. You might reinforce that thought verbally through one-on-one discussions or via general announcements. You might reinforce it using the printed word on white boards in the office or on memos to the staff.

In general, you simply want to keep the idea of the bonus plan foremost in their daily thoughts. You want to make it so important to each employee that they are actually thinking about the effect that each action they take will have on their individual bonus. When you have reinforced enough so that you’ve drilled down to individual actions, then you are onto something! For example, as stated before, at US Dispatch, we have a bonus program in place for the phone order-takers that pays them extra based on the percentage of calls answered within 15 seconds. We do enough reinforcement on this to know that virtually every time the phone is answered, the operator is making a truly conscious effort to grab that line before the 15 seconds are up. Now, 15 seconds may seem like a long time but we have an extremely high volume of calls and many times there are two or three calls waiting in line to be answered. We have been successful at promoting our bonus program effectively enough so that it is the primary motivation for answering the phones quickly. When you can drill down to the specific individual act like that, you have reinforced well!

Why does your bonus plan need to be reinforced?

I remember my first brush experience with the concept of reinforcement. I was working for Federal Express as a Station Manager and our district (Chicago) wanted to run a blood drive for the local blood bank as a community service project. We created a flyer and put it up on the wall in all the different offices announcing that the Blood Drive would take place in two weeks. Then the coordinator of the event handed each of the Station Managers a list of about eight different things they wanted us to do between now and the day of the drive to promote the event. Good Grief! I had a business to run. This guy wanted me to be a Master Promoter too!

I protested quite vigorously. I argued that we put a flyer on the wall and people could see it and if they didn’t want to participate, then that was that. How much cajoling did we have to do? Now, I should probably note that I was young and a bit wet behind the ears in those days. Some of the more experienced managers pulled me aside and explained to me that we wanted to get a good showing and that was going to take some extra effort on our part. They explained that we had to remind folks constantly or they simply would forget. While the Blood Drive might be important to the Corporation as a civic duty kind of thing, it wasn’t of great importance to the employees….so we really needed to push it. It was the end result that mattered and the only way to get the results we wanted was to over-advertise the event.

Well, it turned out to be a big success and the head office and, of course, the Blood Bank, were very pleased. But it only happened because we promoted it so heavily.

Turns out that lesson kept coming back to me. I realized that I had to be a Master Promoter in my own business to my own employees. Sometimes as I am doing that kind of promoting (or reinforcement) I catch myself thinking "I shouldn’t have to work this hard to remind them all the time." But the truth is, I am competing with all the other important things in their lives and it’s a battle for brain time. You simply must be aggressive in your reinforcement efforts!

MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES!