For many sales leaders and compensation administrators, just the thought of year-end can raise levels of stress and exhaustion. And it’s no surprise. Working on dozens (sometimes hundreds) of different plans for different business units or spending hours inputting payouts into a system leads to overwork. Several compensation and finance teams feel pressure to work through the holiday season in order to meet business goals before year-end. This, paired with the effects of COVID-19, have left millions of workers feeling burned out. In fact, 67% of employees said burnout has gotten worse during the pandemic. Burnout can lead to low productivity, high turnover, and loss of top talent. To retain employees and have a successful year-end, business leaders and decision makers need to find ways to reduce burnout.
We’ll let you in on a secret. The end of the year sales compensation processes doesn’t need to be stressful.
Here's how to avoid sales burnout at year-end.
1. Automate Your Processes
Between hundreds of emails, reworking your plans, manually inputting information from spreadsheets and connecting to multiple systems into your systems, the amount of extra work time to complete your tasks can lead to compensation chaos and in turn employee burnout. Even after spending time on all this work, payouts can be inaccurate, formulas can be wrong, and plans can change.
Multitasking between all these tasks can be counterproductive. Studies have shown that switching to a new task while in the middle of another increases the time it takes you to finish both tasks by 25%.
Investing in technology solutions that automate your processes can remove compensation friction by improving payment accuracy, significantly reducing administration time, and allowing you to focus on what really matters. When asked about the benefits of using an Incentive Compensation solution versus their traditional method, the team at Magyar Telekom shared:
“The improved flexibility allowed for a significant reduction in manual efforts and put control in the hands of business users (rather than IT), meaning changes can be made more quickly.”
Magyar Telekom needed a flexible, user-friendly tool with the capability to manage their level of complexity. Get more insights from Magyar Telekom's case study to see how we helped support their 4, 400 payees across the company.
2. Recognize and Reward Your Sales Teams
Now more than ever, people want to feel like they are engaged, recognized, and working towards something. Employees don’t want to be just another number. In fact, many attribute workplace burnout to insufficient rewards, breakdown of community, and the absence of fairness. Involving employees in the decision-making process, as well as recognizing and rewarding them, overall contributes to the success of the organization.
In some organizations, there are different business units and multiple levels of signoffs and approvals. Having an Incentive Compensation Management solution in place can help streamline these internal processes.
The way businesses create their compensation plans and incentives can motivate employees and uncover new insights to incentivize behavior. Celebrating little victories and managing by objectives can make certain tasks more achievable and reduce burnout.
3. Enhance Employee Experience
According to Forbes, 70% of employees would leave their organization for another that offers resources to reduce burnout. Working on holidays to meet the compensation deadlines or giving sellers little autonomy result in high turnover.
Investing in your teams’ well-being also improves your bottom line. The World Health Organization has found a $4 ROI for every dollar invested into mental health and productivity improvements.
A sales compensation management solution allows for sales reps, sales leaders, and compensation teams to collaborate and build a sense of community by having a transparent budget and forecast goals, insightful data, and more. Sales teams are likely to feel better when they feel a sense of belonging and work with people who trust and care for one another.
Having a solution in place can also help manage complexity. Imagine a global Enterprise business that has over 100 locations, each with a variety of business objectives and sales plans can be a time-consuming and confusing task, that includes having to obtain all the various data and process inputs into one system. The same applies to a smaller business with hundreds of plans that need to be centralized to prepare compensation payouts. Each business unit has different goals, incentives, and motivators. An enhanced sales performance management solution can navigate these different business needs, streamline processes, and add insights to plans so each employee has a better working experience.
Learn why Compensation Planning Has Gotten More Interesting to help you plan ahead for a strong, revenue-driven year.
At a time when millions are quitting their jobs monthly, companies cannot afford to not address employee burnout. Don’t risk falling victim to the effects of the Great Resignation. Retain your top talent and reduce the feeling of burnout before entering the new year! Learn more about improving comp plans to beat burnout with our latest eBook, How to Create Better Comp Plans in 2022.
