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Management & Leadership vocabulary · Motivation and Feedback

Incentive

Meaning in management & leadership, with examples

/ɪnˈsentɪv/nounCommon term

In management & leadership, incentive means: Something, such as a bonus, a commission or an extra day off, that is offered to encourage people to work harder or to behave in a particular way.

In Turkish: teşvik, özendirici, prim

How it is used

Used in HR, sales and management: financial incentives, an incentive scheme, an incentive to do something. Managers design incentives carefully, because a badly designed incentive can reward the wrong behaviour.

Example sentences

  1. The new incentive scheme rewards whole teams, not just individual sellers.

  2. There's no incentive to share ideas if only the manager gets the credit.

Common collocations

  • financial incentive
  • incentive scheme
  • offer an incentive
  • an incentive to do something
  • tax incentive
  • motivationThe reasons and energy that make a person want to do something and keep doing it, such as interest in the work, recognition, money or a sense of purpose.
  • recognitionPublic or private praise and appreciation for someone's work or achievement, such as a thank-you, an award or a mention in a team meeting.
  • targetA specific number, level or result that a person or team is expected to reach within a set time, such as a sales figure or a cost limit.
  • KPIShort for key performance indicator: a number that shows how well a person, team or company is doing against an important goal, such as monthly sales or customer satisfaction.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Motivation and Feedback

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