Eight Innovative Incentives for New Retail 4.0
How To Create a Company Culture That Illustrates Your Core Values
Retail 4.0, or the new realm of retail, entails customer engagement across omnichannel. The objective is to offer customers immersive experiences. One question worth considering at this juncture is – who will deliver these immersive experiences to the customer?
Since phygital or Retail 4.0 is the culmination of the best of worlds of the physical store and the digital world, it combines new-age technologies and your frontline employees, who will be liable to offer customers high-end experiences. While for the technological infrastructure, you need to invest in robust and cutting-edge ecosystems; for the HR element, you must invest in your manpower. Not just getting the right talent onboard but also keeping them motivated enough to deliver top-notch experiences to your customers!
Will your current incentive program work in the new era? Unfortunately, no. This is because it needs to be tailored to meet the needs of the latest Retail 4.0.
You may be prepared for the challenges of Retail 4.0, but this is one aspect that you need to focus on at the earliest. You must think ‘disruptive’ to make your incentive program relevant, viable, and productive.
Here are eight innovative recommendations to incentivize your retail employees in the phygital world.
1. Tenure-based Incentives
Tenure is the duration that an employee spends with a brand. One of the easiest ways to make your retail staff feel ‘belonged’ and ‘special’ is to reward them for their loyalty. For not being a part of the attrition race. These are people who have been around for years.
The best way is to create a pathway that is milestone-based. For example, award your employees for completing a certain number of years and compound the rewards with an increasing number of years.
2. Upskilling Incentives
In the new-age Retail 4.0, frontline staff needs to be well-trained digitally or in handling customers. By providing them with an ecosystem where learning and development are a part of the ecosystem, you prepare them for the immediate future and their long-term career progression. Thus, upskilling is a way to keep your staff engaged meaningfully. Furthermore, they can be incentivized to demonstrate the skills they learned during such training sessions.
3. Teamwork Incentives
Organizations have realized that the best performances are delivered when people work together as a team. In Retail 4.0, teamwork will be the champion, so it is imperative to incentivize the team as a whole. While team incentives may be a part of your current program, remember, in the new retail era, incentives should be more about achievements than mere numbers (as in sales). Hence, your need to pre-decide non-sales targets like customer satisfaction, upselling, teamwork, etc., to incentivize. These are gain-sharing incentives. There could also be merit–based incentives wherein frontline employees are given incentives based on their efforts and not the end result.
4. Value Add-On Incentives
We agree that in Retail 4.0, sales cannot be the only determinant for incentives. You need to look for value-added services your employees provide to reward and motivate them. For example, incentives are given to help create a holistically happy buying journey for a customer. If the customer was delighted at every touchpoint during the purchase cycle or had moment-to-moment satisfaction, the concerned retail employees should be rewarded. Similarly, if the frontline workers are helping customers by equipping them to make better buying decisions in the integrated format, they should be incentivized.
5. Career Progression Incentives
Along with upskilling, think of incentivizing your hardworking and smart frontline employees through a career progression path. Not just vertical growth in the company that is more of moving up a ladder of designations, but also consider horizontal movements, from retail to purchase, inventory, or finance, depending on the individual’s choice. Keep sharing this information with your employees occasionally and announce new progressions so that employees are aware and know that their interests are important to the organization.
6. Company Value Incentives
Most companies have missions, visions, ethics, and values as part of their organizational evolvement process. Still, these are usually limited to becoming posters stuck to the wall or the employee handbook given to a newcomer on the date of joining. To enforce the values, you can incentivize your staff to adhere to or uphold these values. For example, if honesty is a part of the value system and a frontline employee showcases this value in their daily work life, incentivize the said employee for their behavior. This serves as a reminder to others so they can also do the same in their day-to-day functioning.
7. Gamified Incentives
Work can be fun, and this type of incentive helps do that. By duplicating a game-type environment at your storefront and introducing aspects like levels, leaderboards, badges, etc., you can help your employees enjoy the process of customer handling and selling. It also helps bring a fun-filled positive competitive spirit to the team. Motivate your employees to move up the levels or the tiers by creating the right incentives at each step.
8. Negative Incentives
If you want your retail staff to avoid certain behaviors or outcomes, introduce this incentive program. It is like setting a lower permissible limit for behaviors and activities acceptable in the workplace. It works best when combined with a positive incentive. For example, retail frontline employees can be incentivized to achieve their sales target. Still, alongside, they can be informed that the incentives will be lost if the storefront gets a certain number of escalations or customer complaints. This way, employees will go the extra mile to ensure minimal discord in customer experiences at the store.
Conclusion
The new Retail 4.0 comes with plentiful promises. Companies must sync multifaceted aspects of their operations to make every shopping experience truly valuable for customers. But, they need to remember that minus the retail staff, only a little can be achieved in this gamut. So, the need of the hour is to innovate novel methods of motivating and incentivizing staff.
To know more about the incentives for Retail 4.0, download the complete guide here.
Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.
Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.
As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values.
Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success
Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values.
For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!)
What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee. Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway: Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back!
It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks.
HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES
Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion:
1. Pin Down your core values:
Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.
“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar)
To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe. Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number.
2. Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:
Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start.
Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces.
For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link)
Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
3. Induct all employees into the values:
When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly.
4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:
So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.
In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.