Bonus schemes for non-sales people

How do you run a bonus scheme for non-sales people? I’d value your thoughts in the comments

I can’t remember every bonus scheme I’ve put in place but I do remember the process:

1. Idea – Me (Excited): “I want to reward non-sales teams”.

2. Conception – Me (Very Excited): “I’ve given this a lot of thought”.

3. Launch – Team (Luke-warm): “How does…What if…Why does it…”

4. Active - Me (Disappointed): “This doesn’t seem to be working as I wanted”.

5. Death

It felt like for our sales team we might need to occasionally tweak the mechanics of a bonus scheme, but for everyone else, the scheme would need to be ripped up and started again.

?Death of a non-salesperson scheme

Here’s my post-mortem on the schemes that didn’t work out:

• Staff are disconnected from the beginning (“I can’t see how I influence our ability to meet targets”)
• The reward point feels too far away (“So I get share options, but when will I get money?”)
• A significant change in the business skewed our numbers. (“So that big client means we hit target five days into a six-monthly bonus cycle, how does this motivate me?”)
• The scheme is too binary (“So if we’re under by 2% then we don’t get the reward?”)
• There’s no easily accessible progress indicator for the scheme (“How do we know if we’re ahead or behind without asking the CEO?”)

Starting Again: Business x People

I went back to basics on what the business needs from a scheme and what I believe our team wants from us.

What the business wants from a scheme:

We want great individuals to become greater (Filling in on weaknesses, growing strengths) and we want revenue growth (Greater cross and up-selling from non-salespeople). We - fundamentally - want to reward employees with a cash amount that is significant and has a positive impact.

What the team want from a scheme:

Our team want personal growth (“I want to be better at more things”) and - let's be honest - more money. I've always been open with the team about wanting them to have better lives because they're helping the business grow.

Bonus Scheme v125

After the “lot of thought” phase, this is what we’ve gone for:

1. This is a test of a bonus scheme (Gives us a soft-landing if it needs significant work)
2. Bonuses are paid monthly in salaries as cash. (No waiting around for rewards)
3. The scheme is based on personal growth targets that we set on a monthly basis for each individual. (Let's fast-track your development as part of this scheme, and tailor it to you)
4. Our aim is to have each team-member become better at something that helps the business, and is important for their career path. (Win:Win)
5. Each team member has a sponsor who sets their goals with them and supports them during that period of growth. (Let's work closely with each team member and help them as part of this scheme)
6. Bonuses are tiered: No progress = No Reward, Good progress = Cash Reward and Outstanding = Cash Reward x2.75. (Lets set some ambitious stretch targets with equally ambitious rewards.

FYI hitting the top (“Outstanding”) tier each month gives employees an average 19% salary increase for the year.

What does success look like?

We also thought through how we would determine if this scheme was a success:

• The team understand and appreciate the scheme. It should be easier to measure if the team understand the scheme but "appreciating" is harder to bottle. In my eyes a good scheme will be seen as something important and positive by the employees. Consciously or sub-consciously the team appreciate having that scheme in place. We're thinking about measuring this in the future by asking "What if we removed the scheme".
• The team get a good financial reward from the scheme. If it adds 2% to the annual salary of an employee then something is broken, as the aim is to enrich our employees. This is easy to measure over time as we issue more bonuses.
• The business sees a return. The nuts and bolts of the scheme are building up our employees so we have a stronger team, which will indirectly lead to more revenue (through efficiencies or up/cross-selling). We can measure how well employees are built up through the goals within the scheme (How many employees have hit Good or Outstanding in their personal goals). We can also measure revenue from up/cross-selling easily, and efficiencies by

If you’ve read this far you’ve probably got a passion for bonus schemes. Bravo. Why not share what’s worked for you (and what hasn’t) as an employee or employer.