How to Motivate and Reward your Employees

How to Motivate and Reward Your Employees

I have worked in HR for almost 10 years now, and all too often I see people start new roles full of excitement and enthusiasm, only to become disheartened a short time later and leave when they don’t feel that the employer/employee relationship is in balance. Rewarding your employees is simple yet effective for creating a work environment where people feel valued, but clearly depending on the size of your employer and with the current climate being quite unpredictable, not all employers have huge budgets to motivate and reward their employees without swallowing every last penny of their profits.

Rewards don’t have to cost a fortune however. Sometimes the simple things have the biggest impact. Here are a few modest yet effective ways to show your team that you appreciate their efforts! 🙂

A handwritten thank you note
Those round-robin emails telling the team how great the business is doing are great but they don’t always hit the individual in the way that you want.
Making someone feel valued isn’t always about spending heaps of money or setting off fireworks. The small stuff can really count, especially when it comes from a member of senior management or the CEO themselves. A handwritten note of thanks – or a handwritten note acknowledging a difficulty or a personal issue – can give someone a warm glow that lasts for days.

Team Building Exercises 
As team-building exercises go, there are some good and some awful. A team cookery course can be one of the best. We are not all
brilliant at the BBQing, cooking and the baking aspect of creating food. The importance of a family eating together has similar ramifications for a team with some of the best conversations taking place in informal breaks between work tasks. But with such hectic schedules, it is not uncommon for staff members to either sit at the desk and eat or forgo lunch completely. To take your staff on a cookery course as a team bonding session not only helps them have loads of fun learning new skills but just as importantly, they all sit down and eat their creations together.

The Christmas bonus or profit share scheme
Money isn’t always the best motivator or reward, and yet we all need it. An annual Christmas bonus or the profit share scheme are great ways of fairly rewarding employees.

• Bonuses – a staff bonus shared across the team is a welcome boost, and a great way of supplementing the December wage slip at the time the team needs it most.
• Profit share schemes – many big high street brands have a profit share scheme where staff opt-in and buy a small share in the company (this can be a token gesture payment of £1) as members of the scheme. Clearly, contributing to the success of the company will yield a profit in which they get a share. It may be a workable solution for your company

Subscriptions
When someone goes above and beyond, it makes sense that you want to say thank you. And this doesn’t have to be a one-off activity.
Why not take out an annual magazine subscription for that person? Of course, you’ll need to find out their hobbies and interests because a year’s subscription to Steam Train Monthly may not be their thing… 🙂

Time off
There are a handful of firms of reward and motivate staff by giving them paid leave as a thank you for going the extra mile.
However, this clearly has implications for your staffing levels so is something that would need a strategy behind it. Giving the majority of team members the day off to leave a handful of people struggling to deliver the same level of service demotivates. Alternatively you could operate the ‘day off on your birthday’ scheme (or a day close to it if it falls on a non-working day), which makes it much easier to pre-plan appropriate cover.

Tickets to an event
Some companies buy a corporate box to entertain VIPs and potential trade partners at events and use this as a thank you to staff.
Whilst this makes great use of an investment, you may also want to consider giving away tickets to major events from sporting events to concerts, festivals and gigs.

Enjoy a field trip together
From an afternoon away from the office to a weekend orienteering around forests, taking time out together to enjoy a field trip is also a great way of motivating and rewarding staff. It may not be everyone’s favourite activity but by spending time together, the bond between team members is strengthened too.

Overall, when it comes to business, finding and holding on to great talent is critical to the success of your company or organisation. Money is not always the key motivator. Employers should look beyond it and reward the individual in a bespoke way that they are likely to value.

This is a collaborative post

Seasoned Courses offer over 35 cookery and baker courses, the majority of which are suitable as corporate and staff building events.