How To Drive Employee Engagement With A Rewards Program
Employee engagement is easily the single most important metric when gauging the productivity of a workforce, engaged workers perform better, have a higher loyalty to the company and boost your eNPS score by often becoming promoters of your business.
Employee engagement represents the level of commitment employees feel toward their employers and their jobs. The higher the level of engagement, the more likely an employee will go the extra mile to perform well and be an advocate for the company.
A poll conducted by Gallup on employee recognition and engagement had some interesting insights:
- When a manager focuses on someone’s strengths, the likelihood of that person becoming disengaged drops to a mere one percent.
- When a manager focuses on someone’s weaknesses, the likelihood of disengagement rises to 22 percent.
- When a manager ignores someone, the likelihood of disengagement rises to 40 percent.
One of the proven ways to boost this is by providing an employee rewards program. Employees respond to appreciation at work, especially when it’s expressed through recognition of their efforts because it confirms their work is valued. A simple thank you goes a long way and will not only make your employees feel good, but will actually benefit your business in the process.
There are 6 benefits to having a well thought out benefits plan:
1. Productivity
2. Job satisfaction
3. Employee happiness
4. Retention
5. Loyalty
6. Team culture
Employee Rewards that are visible to staff to provide an added incentive to work hard. Performance metrics are also visible to the senior team, so that they can monitor progress and proactively recognise efforts at appropriate times.
Platforms like Guusto provide an inexpensive way to get started. Guusto especially is completely free to use as they get their revenue from merchants that provide services on their platforms.
Types of Employee Rewards
These can be broken down into monetary and non monetary rewards, for purely monetary we have :
- Salary increase
- Bonuses
- Commissions
- Stock options
- Tuition reimbursement
- Paid career development and training opportunities
- Retirement and healthcare plans
- Paid time off
- Profit sharing plans
- Merit pay
- Company car, laptop, mobile phone and other work equipment
- Free meals
- Gift cards
- Conferences and work travels
One would assume that employees largely prefer monetary rewards for their rewards but a study conducted by Incentive Marketing shows that 65% of employees actually prefer non cash rewards that help in their career progression, like:
- Job promotion
- More job responsibility
- Job enrichment
- Job security
- Employee empowerment
- Parking space
- Achievement trophy or medal
- Internal career development
- Thank you awards
- Achievement certificate
- Flexible work hours and locations
- New office space
- Days off
- Employee ambassador role
- Free health checks
- Lunch outings with Management
Finding the right type of rewards program depends on your team size and their individual needs and wants, but something everyone can appreciate is a gift cards to popular coffee chains or at companies like Amazon.
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