In a perfect world, every employee would be putting in 100% quality performance every single day, enabling the organization to achieve 100% of its goals. However, any business owner or manager knows that such is simply not possible. There are a number of factors that could be preventing workers from doing their best in the workplace. Maybe they are finding it difficult to relate with their team members or a particular client. The new technologies being utilized in the office could be completely new to them. Perhaps the latest task assigned to them is quite detached from their area of specialization. Or maybe they have been performing the same tasks over and over, and are finding it hard to stay engaged in meeting their targets. At the same time, there will still be some employees who remain consistent with achieving their individual objectives. You want to keep these performers motivated to sustain their current level of delivering quality, while encouraging those who are lagging behind, for whatever reason, to try harder and raise their own performance levels. One strategy that you can employ to accomplish these is to put together a thoughtfully designed employee incentives program. The good news is that there are specialists you can hire, such as the seasoned team behind Peak Performance, to research, develop and implement all the details of the appropriate incentives program for your specific organization, and to help you fetch the results you seek. Throughout the planning and preparation for your program, here are four key things you need to be mindful of at all times:

1. Keep your intended results in mind. Every detail, every provision you introduce to the program must be poised to secure the very results you are after. The selection of the incentives, for example, must be done with care to ensure that your employees will find sufficient motivation and drive to aim for these rewards and help the company meet its goals.

Travel incentives are especially popular rewards — from trips to exotic destinations, to tickets to a highly anticipated sports or musical event, to a relaxing spa getaway package, employees are more responsive to incentives that will let them walk away with new and unique experiences. Offering incentives that employees will truly want to aim for, because of the value these will add to their lives, can help you improve overall company performance, meet project objectives, build employee morale, foster teamwork, and a host of other benefits for the company.

2. Give everyone an opportunity to be considered.As previously mentioned, different employees exhibit different levels of performance. While traditional incentive programs would reward the top performers, it's important not to make the rest of your organization feel like they are not fit to compete for the rewards.

Segment your organization into different groups and give each one an incentive to aim for. This gives everyone an equal opportunity to aim for an incentive, and it demonstrates your appreciation for the work that each member of your team contributes toward your company goals.

3. The program will need to be managed from start to finish. Any in-house company event organizer will know how tedious putting together team building activities, company trips and other special events can be. So you need not form a committee within your company to take time away from their regular tasks and get to work on building your incentives program.

Your hired event planners will have teams trained specifically to handle meetings and incentives program arrangements for you — from booking venues to securing transportation needs, discussing logistics and working on a budget with their client, hiring presentation speakers and managing the flow of events for the attendees on the actual day, etc.

4. Everyone wins. Lastly, it's essential to remember that both the organization and its employees stand to benefit from an incentives program. Hitting company targets, cultivating a positive work culture, developing teamwork, motivating individual excellence, expressing appreciation for all efforts exerted throughout the workplace — everyone walks away with a positive experience from the program.