Non-Cash Rewards Can Help Your Company Weather the Economic Storm

Today human resources has the opportunity and the pressing need to get creative with pay-for-performance compensation. The Alexander Group, a sales-growth consulting firm, has forecast a modest 4-percent increase in incentive compensation pay for sales personnel this year. Companies, meanwhile, are getting serious about managing through the uncertain economy; buyers are watching expenditures; and sellers are looking for every bit of sales motivation they can muster. This dictates thinking outside the traditional incentive compensation “cash box” to counter the effects of the modest 4-percent raise with other rewards.

Non-cash rewards have proven effective in motivating employees to excel in all types of economies. And they have proven effective not just for the sales team, but other functions such as customer support, marketing and other specific corporate audiences. Non-cash rewards go where cash cannot in rewarding specific behaviors and creating a positive work environment. They provide greater agility anytime there’s a special opportunity such as rewarding up sell or cross sell, moving excess inventory in the channel, resolving customer-support cases, attracting prospects to marketing events, etc. The instant gratification factor of non-cash rewards also is attractive to many employees, particularly younger employees with little patience for annual or semiannual bonuses.

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