Incentive programs help increase productivity and helps motivate other employee's to strive harder. This gives them a sense of accomplishment, making them strive more and be examples to other employee's and students. This also in effect give out a positive attitude and yet with a healthy working environment.

Incentive programs are designed to reciprocate positive internal or external attitudes displayed either by the employees (i.e. consistent early birds in the workplace) or by the customers or clients, like customer loyalty. It is non-verbal communication that tells the end receiver that the positive traits he or she is continually displaying - such as work ethics, mastery of tasks, diligence or commendable performance - did not go unnoticed.

Incentives come in different forms inside a company - money-based and promotion-based. It takes a sound and solid in-house character assessment team to notice when it is suitable to dangle money in exchange for an improved performance and when it is time that the deserving tenured employee gets a new workstation along with a new title and improved compensation. However, in this case, compensation is just a matter of formality and propriety.

Individuals are exposed to award programs as early as their first year in formal education, as schools honor outstanding students who showed the highest aptitude in a subject or field of study. Awards are also given to those who excelled in extracurricular activities that gave the school honor, such as victories in sports or athletics meets, journalism, theater, or subject specific competitions like math, English and science contests.