Incentives are a vital part of a company’s arsenal when improving performance and productivity. Due to the KPI driven nature of recruitment, incentives are particularly effective. Tailoring them specifically to your workers needs is the decisive key to success.

When running a company those that are inspired to work for you as opposed to those that carry out the bare minimum, or avoid the repercussions of your temper, will prove the more industrious.

Understand your recruiter

The foremost rule is to understand your team. Know their strengths and know what they would consider a reward.

Everyone has different strengths and it makes far more sense to utilise them as opposed to hinder them. Measuring workers by the same KPIs may play to one worker’s strength and illuminate another’s weakness – this potentially could be a good thing if you’re looking to weed out particular weak ties.

If you’re going to tailor the reward to your employees, bear in mind that a day at the football or races might be considered more of a punishment for some, who may prefer a day at the spa.

Don’t second guess what would incentivise them – find out.

Team based or individual?

Both approaches have their place and with incentives it’s essential to include the two, as everybody needs to have an attainable goal to push them forward.

The benefit of having a team based incentive is it encourages unified performance and co-workmanship – regardless of experience everyone has a place and part to contribute to improve the team.

While competitiveness is a desired trait in recruiters, not all workers thrive when being pitched against their colleagues, some are far more responsive to competing with their own performance – it’s really a case of knowing your workers.

Pitting people against each other with obvious differences in performance can be a dangerous game to play, as on one hand it can drag the underperformer up-to-par, but on the other, it can de-motivate them entirely.

From the ground up

There are a number of KPI’s to measure on, from a recruiters daily objectives of sending out mailshots, finding leads and posting adverts – through to organising interviews, pulling jobs and ultimately, securing deals.

The importance of having a variety of incentives ranging from small to large, for new through to experienced workers, is to keep them constantly improving and not all chasing the same ticket.

Different incentives can be used to target different areas for improvement in your team – essentially you’re the helmsman of the ship and using rewards to create a fun and competitive atmosphere, is going to reflect on you and the company’s performance.