Affordable Incentives to Keep Your Employees Motivated

To properly reward for good work and encourage more high quality efforts, it’s important for managers and owners get to know their employees. For example, some employees might enjoy public rewards but others may find these uncomfortable. To properly reward and encourage, take a little time to get to know how your employees prefer to be motivated.

Survey

By surveying employees about a few of their favorite things, you can give targeted thanks. Find out their favorite coffee beverage, their favorite lunch spot or their favorite way to spend an afternoon off. With that information, you have a database of personalized gift card ideas that won’t cost much.

Be sure to also find out how employees like to be rewarded. If you want to celebrate someone’s work and you put together a public presentation that makes them uncomfortable, you haven’t done much to encourage that employee or the employees around them to put in their best effort in the future.

Visibility

Not all employees will be comfortable with big displays, but you should still let award winners be visible in simple ways. When other employees see that your rewards are achievable, they will believe that they can be winners too and will work harder to earn those rewards. Offer a VIP parking spot or framed photo to keep your over-achievers visible.

Time Off

When a deadline is looming, consider offering a gift of time. Once the project is delivered and out the door, offer an afternoon or morning away from the office as reward. This also allows your hardworking employees a chance to refresh their minds after an intensive project, which will help them on their next project. Do your best as a leader to not turn this reward into a punishment by piling up the in-box of the winner.

Office Community

Not all motivation has to be reward-based. You also want to make sure that the work environment you provide is positive so that those who haven’t been rewarded yet are encouraged to reach their goals as well. This doesn’t have to be expensive. Build a relationship with your employees as you get to know them to boost office camaraderie. Provide the office with coffee and snacks, which can keep energy up, and can be bought in bulk online.

Motivation is, to a great extent, internal. Make sure everyone is fully aware of your company or division’s goals and that they are justly rewarded when that goal is hit. If your company practice includes piling more work than is fair on your best employees, you may be killing motivation. However, by making rewards visible to all employees, even just in simple ways, you can boost motivation in your employees that are not up to speed.