Incentives


Incentives can be a great tool to boost performance measures or goal outcomes. When I was working for my old job since it was a drug store, they had a variety of different incentives just at different times through out the year and it depended on the department you worked for. One of the many incentives that I used to look forward too was the flu shot incentive. you received a extrinsic reward, $1 for every person you took back to the pharmacy to receive a flu shot. It was great because even though I may have not enjoyed needles or believed in the science behind the yearly flu vaccine, I was still able to receive the incentive. I felt bad after I left and gained a new job, because honestly if it wasn’t for the incentive, I would not have engaged in such a controversial topic to my customers.

I think the money drove the behavior because the position was already underpaid, but for someone that had just started their career path, you need to start somewhere. It was easy to talk someone into getting something that takes 3 minutes to complete. There was some mistakes with the overall design. They tracked the shots & customers by a slip of paper that had our name on it. sometimes the pharmacy techs would throw out our paper and write their name down to steal the $1. you either earn it or steal it.
I believe that type of behavior was due to it being individualized. We should have just had a number the whole store wanted to accomplish and all receive the same small bonus. then there would have been no competition against one and another.

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