My boss at Roto Rooter Rick Arquilla taught me this concept, Rick is now President of Roto Rooter Services Inc.  WIIFM stands for what’s in it for me, everybody listens to WIIFM. The value of this to you as a manager or owner is that when you present changes or opportunities, or even in your recruiting you should present things in a light of what is in it for them. RTM was an Arby’s Franchisee and they had a management program that was designed to light a fire under the manager. The program was that if a person was a manager at a particular location for five years with a certain set of performance records the company would sell the store to them over the next five years. Each year you receive a percent of stock ownership and at the end of the five years you would have a total of 50% ownership. This was a clear case of WIIFM. When being interviewed the employee could actually believe that they could end up owning the store.

At Roto Rooter the bonus plan for managers was set up with an original goal based on past performance, and when the new manager took over that was the goal until he left. So as he grew the company he received 10% of the increase in profits every year as bonus. You can imagine staying at a particular location and growing it from 20 trucks to 40 you have quite an opportunity to increase your earnings, another classic example of WIIFM.

At the Daycare I consulted we offered a bonus to the teachers for every child they enrolled which created an environment where every employee was vested in maintaining enrollment and not just their own class but others.

When you run an organization you have to have clear standards of performance and it is best if you have some kind of rewards in place that are in the best interest of the employees. What you want is programs were you don’t have to wonder if the employees share your desire to grow the business.

You will occasionally have an employee that isn’t motivated by the carrot so then you implement the stick. Then try to figure out how to get them motivated without it becoming a fulltime project. I would suggest reviewing the hiring process for these people for insights on how to reduce hiring of non motivated people.