How to Effectively Incentivize your Employees

 The unpredictability of today’s job market is challenging organizations to find innovative ways to compel talent. Making sure your organization cultivates an environment with high levels of employee satisfaction is essential to maintaining long-term employees and attracting new candidates. 

When planning your employee engagement and incentive programs, there are many practices to consider.

1. Do: Consider What People Find Meaningful

In order to build effective rewards and benefits programs, it’s important to consider what will be found meaningful to your employees. Factors such as demographic, lifestyle, and location will affect what people respond to. For example:

• For Recent Grads: Individuals who have just graduated are mainly looking for growth opportunities. Creating rotation programs or the chance to shadow supervisors could be a good way for those in entry-level positions to gain exposure.

2. Don’t:  Create Toxic Situations in the Workplace

While a little friendly competition can increase excitement and interest in work, it also has the potential to create tension and hostility between coworkers and teams. Ensure rewards-based programs don’t compromise the integrity or quality of the work being done. 

3. Do: Create Rewards Which Contribute to Company Goals

Consider what your company wants to achieve: Whether you’re looking to improve your bottom line, enhance corporate culture, or improve processes- use reward programs to direct employees to larger organizational goals.  For Example:

• Recognition rewards: These rewards are the key to employee engagement. They make your employees feel valued and build energy and commitment from them. As a result of investing in your employees using recognition rewards, they will invest back into your company by increasing their productivity. 
• Referral Programs: Employers could offer incentives for candidate referrals to ensure that their business is maintaining a steady stream of new talent in their queue. Employees will appreciate these benefits and feel good about recommending candidates that they believe will fit nicely into their company culture. 
• Professional Development: To engage employees in professional development, your company could start by creating its own Learning and Development program. These will assist team members as they get the hang of using different tools, and may even give them the opportunity to earn recognition points along the way. 

4. Don’t: Create “high-cost/low-adoption” Programs

If you’ve put together an incentive program that your workers aren’t taking full advantage of, make sure you’re not wasting money or resources. Whether it’s raising awareness that the perk exists or getting to the bottom of why it’s not being utilized, make sure you aren’t wasting your resources.

5. Do: Make the Most of Incentive and Reward Programs

Incentive programs offer companies the ability to increase transparency and communication within their organization. Often, reward-related programs encourage employees to take more visible ownership of their work and contributions, as well as optimize workflows. Managers can use this as an opportunity to increase the regularity of reporting, ask for feedback, and strengthen their team culture.

Interested in putting a rewards program together for your team?