How to measure a reward programme

Your reward programme is built, ready to go and employees have already heard rumours of existing new benefits and perks. You are chomping at the bit to release it – but before you do- have you considered tracking and ROI?
Marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk famously retorted to someone debating the value of social media activity ‘Well, what’s the ROI of your mother?’, with the point being that some things are untrackable. This could be the feeling in the office, the willingness to go the extra mile.
Fortunately for the board, reporting on your reward programme is possible. Here are some metrics to start tracking from day one.

Incremental improvements

Your first instinct might be to go for the jugular and track revenue or profit against your set baselines and targets. However, a better way to start seeing ROI immediately is to see incremental improvements. This will need to be divided by your teams, but suggestions could be call time and quality, work volume and quality, call numbers and even metrics such as efficiency in internal reporting.
Ideally, you’ll be seeing an increase against your baseline.

Net Promoter Score

NPS is debated often as to its efficiencies, but some kind of survey, feedback form or benchmarking needs to be done before the programme launches and consistently during. You can ask a variety of questions but you need to get to the core of people’s engagement and what this means. Do they feel more motivated to work- or is there no change? Do they want to come to work? Are they looking to leave? Don’t forget your mid-tier management. Studies show this layer of the business can have a direct impact on engagement and that looking top down is critical. Ensure all responses are anonymous and are sent to HR for collating.
It’s also well worth creating weightings for each question that brings an ultimate engagement score. The number of people who are looking for a job might bring a much higher score and a red flag to the table, versus a question regarding their likeliness to recommend the workplace.

Ears to the ground feedback

You need people in your business who can gauge the temperature of your business and tell you what’s happening. What are people saying, and what are their concerns? There is a difference between gossip and off the cuff commentary to the actual concerns and feedback on the sales floor. Speak to leaders in your business who can pass on constructive feedback, and work out a way to compile and collate this so it is meaningful and useful.
As time progresses you can start to really look at the data in areas such as employee retention and hiring rates. In the meanwhile, any improvements are to be celebrated but watched closely. Keep your programme fresh and your goals attainable, and your reward programme will be incredibly easy to show proof of ROI for.