Profit share: Work together and win together

We recently introduced a profit share scheme at SwiftCase, that we developed with the involvement of the entire workforce. We wanted to create a system that shared the value generated inside our business with everyone who contributes to its creation. We are a Software as a Service (SaaS) business, and we grow as the number of users that take advantage of our workflow management system. Delighting our customers is vital to them sticking with us for the long term. Customer churn is a killer for recurring revenue business, as the cost per acquisition rises as the length of time that customers stay with you decreases. So, we needed a measure that included keeping our customer happy, as well as, welcoming onboard new customers.

The Bonus Pool

We chose to take the revenue generated from user licenses as the basis for the “bonus pool”. This pool would then have to be divided using a formula of our design to distribute to the team. Choosing the revenue from licenses as a basis allowed us to cover the role of the whole team, from our customer satisfaction team, through developers building great features that our customers love, to our sales and marketing team members. Getting a formula in place that rewarded performance as a team was vital to align with our ethos as a business. Collaboration is an essential part of how we work as a company, both internally and externally with our clients. It was in everybody’s interest from the CEO/Director level down to the trainee apprentices to keep customers impressed and to help to attract and grow new customer relationships.

Rewarding loyalty

We wanted to enhance the formula to reward company loyalty and the in-depth customer experience and relationships that grow with time at a business. Having knowledgable staff that know our customers and their companies inside out reassures our clients that we are all in this together. We grow when your business grows. Also, we wanted to reward personal development. Individual growth is of course already compensated for by salary rises, but it made sense to us, to base the bonus formula on the pay scale in our company.

The Formula

So, we created a formula together as a business, that divided shares in the bonus pool up, weighted by salary level, with an increase in shares for each additional year that a team member works at the business. As we have seen in a previous article, team-based incentives increase productivity more than individual bonus schemes. One study found an increase of 14% in productivity when a Californian manufacturing business introduced a group-based bonus scheme.

What the staff thought

Additionally, research shows that workers, particularly Millennials, really appreciate transparency from their employer. So, having a scheme that was designed by employees for employees, with transparent information shared each month on the performance of the company was warmly welcomed. Within seconds of announcing the final scheme, I received emails thanking me for the inclusive way we designed the bonus system. The positive response in the office was electric, as some staff were inspired to think differently about their approach to a customer focussed way of working. Plus, I had fired up communications telling me how the company is going to grow, and how we are going to get to 10x and even 100x our current user base.

Work together = Win together.

Businesses that work together win together and those that share the rewards get supercharged results. Take a look at your own business. Is the team at the heart of your organisation? Are you all aligned to a common purpose? Does everyone benefit when the company does well? How can you move forward together? SwiftCase helps thriving businesses, swamped by growing demand, automate and organise, to focus on what matters — loved by 1000s of users across Insurance, Finance, Legal, Service & Contractor sectors.