The 2004 Deluxe Catalog Is Now Available

The 2004 Deluxe Catalog is just off the presses and clearly maintains the PFI standards for effective and motivating award presentation. The new catalog features an impressive 1,290 selections, including an expanded list of brand name manufacturers in addition to the impressive list of some of the most popular brand names featured in previous years. The Deluxe Catalog is a point-based awards catalog with selections organized in merchandise categories rather than plateau price levels. Awards are valued between $20 and $4,000 dollars. This year, 72% of all selections are valued at $500 or less.

The diagram below, is a percentage breakdown of deluxe catalog selections by value.
 

Total Items 1290
Expiration Date 12/31/04 (Redemption through 3/31/05)


WHAT’S NEW?

The big news about the 2004 catalog is all the new products and manufacturers that have been included. Check out these exciting award offerings featured in the 2004 Deluxe Catalog:

New Merchandise Lines

• Columbia Outerwear
• Slazenger Sportswear
• Lauren by Ralph Lauren Accessories
• High Sierra Luggage
• Somerset and Hamilton Studios Art
• Pacific Coast Featherbeds
• Thomas the Tank Engine
• Melissa & Doug Wooden Toys
• Clie
• Betty Crocker
• jWin

Unique Award Selections

• Pilates Machine
• Danskin Workout Bench
• New Callaway Driver, Fairway Woods and Irons
• Robot Vac from Karcher
• Digital Camera with Printer Dock
• DVD Camcorder
• Binocular/Digital Camera Combination
• Digital Audio Player with 40GB Hard Drive

The new 2004 Deluxe Catalog Award collection is the result of a year’s worth of sourcing, selecting and presentation of awards by the PFI merchandising staff.
This final collection includes some of the most popular and sought after merchandise and has been designed to feature the awards that will drive incentive program participants to achieve their goals and earn their right to shop this fantastic award collection. After looking through the Deluxe Catalog, you’ll clearly see that it provides you and your clients the right award solution to achieve performance improvement goals.

You Should See What We’ve Done To Awardlink.com!

Much has changed at the PFI online incentive program management website at www.awardlink.com. First of all there are new access codes. To get to the enhanced Awardlink site, use the word “Award” for the program
number and “Demo” for participant ID or PIN.

The new welcome page has a fresh, clean look featuring merchandise awards and a description of the site contents. A left-hand menu bar highlights links to these site options:

Welcome Letter (Home Page)
Sample President’s Letter
Sample Program Rules Letter
Award Catalog—link to all online catalog and award ordering sites
NEW—Optional Enhancement (Read below for details)
NEW—Program Administration – this section has been significantly expanded (Read below for details)
Service Awards

When you go to the new and improved www.awardlink.com, be sure to check out the newest two sections; Optional Enhancements and Program Administration. You will find out how much more powerful and useful Awardlink has become for helping sell and manage online incentive programs.

Optional Enhancements

The new “Optional Enhancements” sections features three all new online services offered by PFI. Contact the sales and marketing department for pricing.

Employee-To-Employee Recognition

Employee-to-employee recognition has continued to grow in popularity as a way to foster a positive working environment and achieve strategic corporate objectives. The best employee performance programs include this form of peer-to-peer recognition. Now PFI offers you the opportunity to include this with your next online employee performance program. And best of all it is easy to use.

Click on this option and you will see how award points can be deposited into each employee’s (and/or manager’s) reward account, which allows the employee to reward fellow employees points for outstanding performance, or other objectives chosen by the company.

The pull down will show all employees enrolled. The employee who is rewarding the points will click on the name of the person they wish to reward. They then enter the amount of points to be rewarded. (A fixed amount of award points can also be displayed.) The reason code is selected from the pull down bar showing why the points were awarded. Once you click on the Award Points button, a screen appears with “Send Congratulations E-mail” button when the receiving employee has an -email address on file. When they click on that button, an e-mail will be sent and points will be deposited into the receiving account. If an e-mail address is not on file, then a window appears stating, “your points have been awarded.”

The online statement will show the points earned, the reason they were awarded, as well as who issued the points to them.

When this option is included, participants will see a “Rewards” option in the left blue column on their catalog pages. When they click on this they will see that they can award other participating employees. (But
not themselves.)

Participant Survey

The success of an incentive program depends on many critical factors. How goals were set, how clearly they were communicated, the appeal of the award mix and timeliness and accuracy of program reporting are some of the important factors that can and should be monitored to gauge if a program is successful or if it needs additional work.

Now, Awardlink.com presents you the opportunity to survey your incentive program participants through an online survey. Click on this option to see a sample participant survey. Through awardlink.com you can develop your own survey to evaluate your program. In addition, through this survey site you can generate a report showing the responses to each question.

Online Quizzes

Awardlink.com now features an option that allows you to present program participants with online quizzes. Quizzes can be used to test participant's knowledge of the program rules and important sales and/or product information. With this option, you generate the quiz using multiple-choice or true and false questions. We will post it to the site and your participants are given the parameters for taking the quiz. This site also presents the ability to grade your quiz and provide scores. Plus you can offer bonus points for completing the quiz as well as for achieving a benchmark score.

Program Administration

The program administrative section of the Awardlink.com website has had some major enhancements added to it. Through this site you can still enroll participants and issue awards points like before. Now, in addition, you can send mass e-mails and views several standard reports

Mass e-mails

This new feature allows you to generate e-mails to all participants who have an e-mail address on file. The e-mails will be sent the evening of the day generated. Communicating online to participants is now easier than ever before.

Reports

Two standard reports have been added to PFI online incentive program management services. The first report is the cost center report that allows you to track, by cost center, key program information including
participants’ names, their supervisors, points earned
and points redeemed.

The other report now online is the Item Usage Report. This allows you to select a time frame and view a list of all merchandise items ordered and the amount of points redeemed.

Reflections Website Is New, Too

As part of the overall Awardlink.com update, the Service Awards Section has also been updated and enhanced with new graphics and few new features. Now when you go the Service Awards site you can see the award selection as a participant would see it and you can see a sample of an online recognition certificate.

As before, you can still choose selections from each of the fourteen gift award levels.

Go Online, It’s Worth The Time

Given the new look and all the new features, you owe it to yourself and your customers to check out the new site. Awardlink.com is better and more powerful than ever before and this means you can make your online incentives even better.

 

Employee Performance Incentives

More and more U.S. companies are recognizing the power and potential of their employees. At the same time research clearly shows that the majority of workers are not working at their greatest potential. Consider these facts: according to the Public Agenda Forum, fewer than one in four American employees is working at full potential, half of all workers do no more than directly asked, and an astounding 75% of workers say they could be more effective in their jobs. The Gallup organization further reports that seven of ten U.S. employees are not engaged in their work. What this means for you is that there is a tremendous opportunity to introduce the power of incentives to your clients as a strategy for energizing and motivating their workforce to achieve a variety of corporate objectives. Goals to which employee performance incentives can be applied include reducing costs, improving safety, decreasing accidents, improving morale, increasing quality, increasing productivity and recognizing years of service.

What Is The Best Incentive Application To Impact Employee Performance?

There is no single best formula for constructing and implementing employee performance incentive and recognition programs. There are, however, some helpful guidelines and strategies that, when applied, have consistently yielded positive results-driven programs.

Here are the core elements you should consider when designing, presenting and implementing employee performance incentive or recognition programs:

Base earnings: Employees should be offered the opportunity to earn awards consistently throughout the program for achieving a core or primary performance objective (ie: reduce accidents, submit cost-saving suggestions, improve quality standards). Generally 40-50% or more of your awards budget should be dedicated to the base earnings component of the program.

Team earnings: Most companies will have quality teams, work groups, supervisory groups, shifts, production line teams or some form of team structure that can be used to reinforce the most important performance objectives. Team goals can be identified and awards or award points issued based on team performance. Including teams not only reinforces goals, it will enhance the team experience, plus the additional award earning opportunity will enhance the overall motivational impact of the program. Team awards can account for approximately 10-15% of your overall program budget.

Discretionary awards: Most employee incentive and recognition programs are based on quarterly progress and results. Performance may be reported monthly but award issuance is quarterly. In general this is not detrimental to the program. However, the motivational impact of the program can be strengthened when you include discretionary or instant award opportunities. Instant win game cards and bonus point checks or certificates are ways discretionary awards can be presented. These awards should be presented by managers or supervisors who have daily contact with employees and have the ability to immediately recognize and reward someone for a positive performance. This not only actively involves managers and supervisors, it provides the “instant” reward that is the most effective way to positively impact an individual’s performance. Discretionary awards can be included as a “fixed” or closed-end budget element and should account for 20-25% of your overall awards budget.

Bonus options: Bonus options are like performance catalysts. Enrollment bonuses, fast start bonuses and special activity bonuses create an opportunity to foster a greater level of program participation and activity. Monthly, quarterly, and annual top performance bonuses recognize the best performers and provide an incentive to stretch good performance to a level of outstanding achievement. Bonus options can also be built using a closed-end budget and can account for 5-10% of your awards budget.

Supervisor and Manager awards: Including supervisors and managers is a must. In most employee recognition and incentive programs these individuals are responsible for implementing, managing, and promoting the program on a daily basis. They have the most direct and potentially greatest impact on how the program is communicated and presented to employees. Presenting override or cumulative performance rewards to company supervisors and managers based on their performance recognizes and insures their active participation and support of the program.

Communication is essential

Communication frequency and redundancy are critical in employee incentive recognition programs. Employees should have daily visual contact with some form of program reminder. Posters, banners and tent cards are the most common forms of visual identification. In addition to visual contact with the program, employees should be presented with an ongoing communication campaign of performance reminders, personal performance results, and overall program results. Monthly performance statements, reminder mailers, e-mail, paycheck stuffers and a program newsletter are all effective ways to communicate the program and keep employees informed and involved.

Take A Closer Look At All Employee Performance Incentive Opportunities
Here is an outline of the most frequently used employee incentive applications as well as guidelines for successful implementation:

Safety Programs

• Track and reward based on reduction of accidents or reportable incidents
• Quarterly improvement is most common benchmark
• Recognize safety in action using discretionary awards
• Understand ramification of turnover
• Communication is critical and can justifiably account for as much as 50%
  of the overall program budget
• Reinforce safety guidelines
• Don’t overlook language barriers—you may need to present bi-lingual materials

Suggestion Programs

• Base award earnings on approved suggestions
• Encourage employees to calculate savings
• Reward based on percent of savings
• Take advantage of team structure/existing work groups
• Research shows that teams generate better ideas than individuals
• Reward for submitting ideas
• Don’t overlook intangible suggestions

Productivity/Quality Improvement

• Build around measurement systems already in place
• CSI index, product standards, quality standards
• Use multiple criteria for earning vs. single measurement criteria ie: CSI
• Training reinforcement is critical—reinforce standards and procedures
• Clearly communicate expectations

Beyond Measurable Success

Don’t underestimate the benefits of employee incentives and recognition programs beyond measurable results. Additional intangible benefits include:
• Increased morale
• Increased teamwork
• Positive cultural shift
• Increased awareness of corporate objectives:
• Greater adherence to procedures
• Reduced complaints
• Reduced absenteeism
• Improved timeliness
• Improved communications
• Increased commitment by management to continuous improvement

Based on Incentive Federation Research, here is a breakdown of the goals companies have focused on using employee incentive and recognition programs:

Objectives Percent Responding

Improve Safety (reduce claims/lost time) 62%
Build morale 61%
Build employee loyalty/trust 43%
Show management's concern for workers 38%
Build better customer service 29 %
Obtain ideas or suggestions 29%
Improve attendance 26%
 

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