How to Build a Tailored Employee Incentive Program

Summary: Learn how to design an employee incentive program using personas, SMART goals, and branded merch to drive motivation, retention, and team alignment.

In today’s competitive and hybrid work environment, a one-size-fits-all employee incentive program just doesn’t cut it. Top-performing teams are fueled by recognition that feels personal, purposeful, and aligned with what truly motivates them.  

Whether it’s flexibility, professional growth, or memorable experiences, employees want more than generic perks. For mid to senior-level managers, HR leaders, and marketing and events professionals, creating a tailored employee incentive program can be the key to boosting morale, productivity, and retention. We’re going to dive into a handful of strategic employee incentive ideas and why they work.

Table of Contents

1. Understand what motivates your employees
2. Define goals and KPIs
3. Design incentives that go beyond cash
4. Measure and scale

Understand What Motivates Your Employees 

To build an effective employee incentive program, you must first understand what motivates your employees. The best employee incentive programs are the kind that speak to each individual’s goals, values, lifestyles, and motivation. 

Want some examples of gifts for different goals and lifestyles? Check out our list of swag bag ideas for employees.

Survey and Gather Data 

You never want to make assumptions about your employees. Survey them with simple questions like, “What motivates you?” or “How do you prefer to be recognized?” You can also hold focus groups or schedule one-on-one conversations to gather data. Knowing what motivates your team leads to more successful incentive programs, and successful incentive programs lead to greater motivation. In fact, 90% of employees say that receiving recognition for their work motivates them to put in more effort. Read more helpful 2025 statistics on employee recognition. 

Segment by Persona 

Employee personas are representations of employees that take into account real data and insights, like their role, geographic location, motivators, aspirations, recognition preferences, skillsets, and more. Segmenting employees based on their personas can help you tailor incentive programs to receive maximum engagement.

Define Goals and KPIs 

Once you understand who the programs are for, you have to define your goals and KPIs in order to plan and execute effective employee incentive ideas.

SMART Goal Framework 

The SMART goal framework helps you create focused and attainable goals. It’s an acronym for Spefic, Measurable, Achievable, Related, and Time-bound.

• Specific: There should be no room for ambiguity. The goal of your incentive program should be clearly defined with action steps and roles of responsibility.
• Measurable: This is where you define how you plan to track progress and at what point the incentive program is deemed a success. Create measurable benchmarks such as employee participation percentages, reward redemption rates, feedback from the team, comparisons against peers, and financial gains such as revenue or productivity increases.
• Achievable: Ask yourself, is the goal of this incentive program really achievable? Acknowledge and communicate any restraints or setbacks that may impede on the overall goal and take into account the available resources and bandwidth among the team executing the employee incentive program. 
• Related/Relevant: Your goal should fit into the bigger picture of your organization. There are a long list of common goals for employee incentive programs to benefit the greater organization, such as boosting employee engagement, retaining top talent, or increasing performance.
• Time-bound: In order to stay on track, everybody should follow a timeframe with a designated end-point. If the incentive program is ongoing, there should be a designated point to assess progress based on KPIs. 

Behavior vs Outcome Rewards 

When brainstorming employee incentive program ideas, keep in mind there are two types of rewards that you can combine or focus on to motivate employees: Behavioral and Outcome.

Behavioral rewards reinforce and encourage desired behaviors or processes, like teamwork, effective communication, or problem-solving while outcome rewards award achievements like sales targets, improved customer satisfaction scores, or increased productivity. Incentive programs can reward employees based on one or both of these approaches.

Design Incentives That Go Beyond Cash 

When thinking about how to create an employee incentive program, you don’t always have to dish out cash or bonuses. Creating incentives that go beyond cash is a great way to incorporate your company culture and core values.

Experience-Based Rewards 

Working towards experiences that the team can enjoy together not only works towards your program’s goal as a collective, but amplifies company culture as a result. Experience-based rewards may include outings to concerts or sporting events, company-wide parties, catered lunches, or taking a workday off to volunteer or take a day-trip as a team. 

Lifestyle and Wellness 

Rewarding employees with perks that enhance their lifestyles and wellness shows them that you care about their well-being outside of work. Some lifestyle and wellness employee incentive ideas include gym membership reimbursements, additional days off, flexible work arrangements, travel vouchers, or subscriptions to fitness apps and devices. 

Professional Development 

An effective employee incentive program encourages people to grow. Offering professional development opportunities tells employees that you want to invest in their professional growth inside and outside of the company. This employee incentive program could include free training programs, certification courses, or the option for employees to choose development opportunities outside of work.

Recognition Programs  

Employee recognition programs serve as powerful incentives because they are ongoing touchpoints of appreciation. The recognition program may celebrate milestones, anniversaries, or individual accomplishments. Recognition reward ideas could be corporate gifts or points for your company store.

Read our list of top 9 appreciation gifts for hybrid workers. 

Measure and Scale 

Do employee incentive programs work? Of course! But you have to be strategic and adaptable. Continuously tracking key performance indicators and implementing progress reports allows you to track the success of your employee incentive program and enables you to compensate each employee fairly. If you see that your incentive plan is meeting your performance or engagement goals, ramp up the program to include more incentives! If you’re not seeing any results, then make sure to tweak your strategy and communicate changes with your team. 

Final Thoughts 

We all work hard every day to earn our paychecks, but sometimes a friendly competition or tangible goal is the tipping point to turn good performance into great performance. A successful employee incentive program makes people feel like their hard work is meaningful and recognized. At Imprint Engine, we help employee incentive programs come to life through impactful and memorable custom gifts and brand experiences. From brainstorming to reconciliation, we help you every step of the way.

Boost employee incentive with custom branded gifts!