Not Much of a Carrot

If, like most people in business, part of your rewards and motivation strategy is the carrot and stick approach, you aren’t going to have much of a carrot in 2013.  

A recent article on NBCNews.com Business notes that no one is going to be jumping up and down because of this year’s average merit increases.  The average, according to experts who contributed to the article, will be — drum roll, please — 3%.  This isn’t much different from what we’ve seen in recent years. Welcome to the new normal. 

As I’ve often said, we really need to look at how to make workplaces great places to work, where people want to bring their A-game.  To create workplaces that create engagement, money is, obviously, not going to be the whole answer.  As you start planning for 2013, take a step back and think about what your engagement strategy looks like because those annual increase conversations aren’t going to be contributing much. Maybe it’s time to start thinking beyond the carrot and the stick.