Most incentive schemes are based on sales, but there are also schemes based on customer feedback. This can be in the form of surveys, comment cards left out for customers or requests that customers nominate a staff member for good service. Managers can also give on the spot awards if they see staff giving particularly good service.
FairPrice has a number of schemes to reward its staff. "We offer incentives for good service, housekeeping, entrepreneurial performance, and profitability/sales. For service, we take into consideration all customers' feedback on our branches and give them merit/demerit points for providing good/bad service," says CEO Tan Kian Chew.
Quarterly awards are given to the branch with the best customer service and cashiers who have no complaints against them will also get monetary incentives each month. For housekeeping, a team visits branches to check on their housekeeping standards and give out half-yearly Store Proud Award to top branches. Other awards are based on branches' actual sales/profit results. Employees are given continuous learning opportunities and are rotated on jobs to widen their exposure and provide better job satisfaction.
With a staff strength of about 4,800, FairPrice sees training and development as important because the industry has a high turnover rate for cashiers. Also, generally, service levels in the retail industry still need improvement, it says.
Good customer service indeed counts. "To customers it [good service] is nice to have. To retailers customers are nice to have," says training consultant and author Ron Kaufman. "In today's world, most products and services are available in a competitive environment. Commodity selling is not the route to higher profits. Good customer service gives customers an extra reason to come back and spread positive word of mouth. Customers like that. Successful retailers need that," he says.
At Giordano, incentives depend on what level staff are at, says Alison Law, assistant to the chairman. "On the shop floor, incentives are tied to performance," she says, adding that monetary incentives are awarded on a daily basis at the discretion of each store's manager.
But it's not all hard slog. Managers come up with different games for staff each day to make aiming for the bonus fun. As well as year-end bonuses, official bonuses are awarded when targets are met, and some senior staff are also eligible for stock options.
Also making work fun for its 150 employees is Singapore's budget chain, One.99shop. It has a mystery shopper scheme to select the best manager, best shop and best staff each month. "We have monthly sales awards for stores with the highest growth," says Nanz Chong-Komo, the chain's founder. Winning staff are given recognition and monetary rewards.
At supermarket chain Wellcome, "a key thing is that we have jobs!" says marketing director Doug Brown. "We are opening more stores so we are hiring more people, which is unusual, so we're not releasing people. You could say that that's an incentive of sorts; our people don't come to work in fear that they're not going to have a job the next day. Other than that, it's simple compensation - we don't do anything special that any other company in Hong Kong wouldn't do."
The more senior staff have more holidays (more on average than most retail companies, says Brown), and "we make sure we spend a lot of time with them".
In the last quarter of last year, the entire Welcome management team visited each store to personally thank the staff - from management to cashiers - for doing a great job. "We didn't think it was strong enough that the same operation managers relayed this message, we wanted to do it personally, from the CEO down," Brown says.
Cold Storage, which employs more than 2,000 people, has a number of team incentive programs from bonus payments for achieving agreed sales or profit targets to quarterly employee awards which recognise outstanding customer service. It also rewards staff with overseas training trips in an effort to grow the individual's skill base and experience level.
"The most difficult challenge is in finding highly competent store managers and fresh food experts," says CEO Silvestro Morabito. As these skills are very specialised, Cold Storage has invested significantly in in-house learning and development programs.
"We have a saying in Cold Storage that a team of champions will always be defeated by a champion team. The team is absolutely critical to the success of the business and Cold Storage has put in place a very talented and competent Learning and Development team to ensure that our people are given the right training and exposure," says Morabito.
The training programs vary from one-day finance seminars to sponsoring team members for 18-month diploma courses on retailing.
Training is important to upgrade and motivate staff, says Kaufman. "Be sure the supervisors lead by example. Get out on the floor or on the phones and engage with customers where front-line staff can observe you. Be the kind of service provider you want your staff to emulate."
Staff should be motivated with compliments and coached tactfully when they make mistakes, he says. On a team level, incentive programs should reward the entire team when customers applaud the service. "By rewarding the team, you harness peer pressure to maintain high spirits and give customers good service," he says.
"Certainly, and within the organisation, management has to do their part in motivating their staff," says Lau Cheun Wei, executive director of the Singapore Retailers Association. Many companies have Staff of the Week/Month awards to commend and encourage good performance, she says. There are other incentives such as sales commissions on top of basic wages, which is an incentive for the staff to bring in more sales.
The Singapore Retailers Association has also established a series of awards to recognise the best retail concept, the best retail event, the best new entrant to the retail industry, the young retailer of the year, and the retail executive of the year.