It is a fairly well-accepted truism that showing your appreciation of your employees’ efforts will not only give them a boost, but is also likely to benefit your business as a whole. If your staff feel their work is valued, their productivity levels will increase and they’re more likely to consciously ensure their work is of a high standard, which in turn is good for you and your company.
The question then becomes: how can you do this regularly and easily, rewarding those who deserve it? Many businesses have or have considered an employee incentive scheme at some point. Are incentive schemes worth the investment and what benefits can they produce?
Employees who see rewards for the work they do will see their role as valuable to the business, which in turn helps them to feel that what they’re doing matters and is making a positive difference in some way. Of course, this also has a knock-on effect on the happiness of your employees and the working conditions in your business.
A positive working environment, which incentive schemes can help to produce, is valuable through the productivity it engenders. A positive workplace can also help your workers want to continue working for you and make your business somewhere others want to be employed. This will also benefit your company through eliminating the need to continually find and train new staff, which can be both time consuming and costly.
However, as beneficial as rewarding your workforce can be, there are some potential pitfalls to avoid. One unintended side effect of recognising the work of some is making those who miss out on the benefits feel as though they have failed or that the rewards are out of their reach. This in turn can have the opposite effect, demotivating employees and even breeding resentment.
A well devised incentive scheme can avoid this. Not only does such a scheme mean that good performance is consistently valued across your business, but it can also be highly effective in encouraging others who are perhaps less motivated than they could be. Ensuring that you reward results rather than activities, making these proportional and without an upper limit, will help all your employees feel as though all of their good work can potentially earn them additional benefits.
Your incentive scheme needs to be tailored to your business, as you will know best what rewards your employees will value and what targets to set for these to be achieved. A mix of instant and long-term rewards is a good idea, as is giving your staff the chance to celebrate each other’s success to build team spirit. Whatever form it takes, however, there’s no doubt of the benefits of an incentive scheme for both your staff and your business.
As you would expect, Creative Employee Benefits can help you with the consultancy advice, the practical implementation and the employee engagement aspects of any part of an employee incentive scheme and so if this is something you are thinking about for the first time, or looking to review and amend in respect of an existing scheme, then please contact your Creative consultant, or get in touch via info@creativeeb.co.uk.
Sources:
https://news-view.co.uk/the-dos-and-donts-of-incentive-schemes/