An incentive program is a great way to help fine tune the efforts of the team. Most business owners hope their normal compensation and benefits offerings are competitive. The addition of an incentive program can impact the team in many great ways: Help to excite the team and add some variety to the day to day operations. Create a focused effort on a temporary company-wide project. Reinforce management’s leadership efforts. Increase teamwork with a program that allows peer to nominate each other for rewards. When rolling out an incentive program, there are a few key things to consider: Leadership communication The communication from leadership should present the incentive program as a company-wide program that has the full support of senior leadership. The leadership support should be expressed more than once a year. A message, or update, from leadership about the program should be sent out at least once a quarter to help remind the team about the importance of the program. ...

According to a recent report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute over 50% of employees in the U.S. would either drop coverage or shop around for a less expensive health care plan if the government decides to tax company provided health care benefits. 39% of the survey respondents said they would stay with their current program, which is up 10% from last year. Taxing health care benefits could be one way Congress looks to generate revenues in the future. According to the research: 26% of employees would look to switch to a plan that costs less.  21% would look to go directly to insurance companies for coverage. 9% would consider dropping their health care coverage. The survey confirms that health insurance has been, and remains, the more important part of the employee benefits packages. Additionally: 9% of employees would give up health benefits in exchange for higher pay. 15% would exchange pay for better health benefits. 34% would like to get the money ...

As news stories continue to come out about CEO compensation packages and golden parachutes, the public perception of CEOS and their companies is changing in many ways. A recent report released by Healthy Companies International highlighted a handful of trends facing CEOs: Image and Customer Service The growing cynicism of consumers is creating trust issues and image issues for companies. Stockholders who see falling stock prices, yet large executive bonuses being handed out, are getting more frustrated. This is degrading customer loyalty to the company. Consumers are looking for companies to “do the right thing” as they go about taking care of business. Public Relations Companies are facing the reality of instant and widely broadcast communication tools like Twitter, Facebook and Blogs. Companies are not longer in control of the messaging being created about their business. CEOs need to be able to pay attention and address consumers where they are posting complaints and news online. Compa ...

Most corporate executives are targeting performance gains of 20 percent from their employees in 2013. Yet, employees don’t have the right mix of core skills and competencies to hit those kinds of numbers. This is according to advisory company CEB’s recently released Executive Guidance report for 2013.  With 32 percent of leaders planning on using new hires to hit those growth goals, it looks like developing internal current employees is the only way to go. The study of more than 20,000 workers highlighted the new reality in the workplace. Employees must be ready for change. The shifting marketplace and financial pressures are creating a workplace setting where workers are required to be able to take on new roles with little to no traditional change management issues like denial, anger and bargaining. Employees have to be able to roll with frequent organizational change and to work in temporary teams designed to address short term efforts. The report states that 5% of current employees hav ...

Less than half of large companies consider talent management their top priority. 13% consider it a secondary priority. While the remaining companies don’t rank talent management as any kind of priority, according to a recent survey by Right Management, a talent and career management division of ManpowerGroup. Owen J. Sullivan,, Right Management CEO and President of ManpowerGroup Specialty Brands says, “It may be that ‘talent management’ is still an emerging concept for non-HR professionals. Nevertheless, our research finds that HR executives are fully on board with the process, despite implementation posing a continuing challenge. What the survey data tell us is that much of senior management hasn’t yet focused on talent management as an integrated strategic concept, even if they actually support many key elements.” The survey respondents listed what talent management aspect their company participated in: Leadership Development, including coaching and performance ...