It’s reported that nearly a quarter of all workers will not return to the office fulltime. This fundamentally changes how you manage your employee rewards and recognition. Staff wellbeing and connectivity is now a conversation at the forefront of all organisations planning.
It also shifts the onus on large corporates who previously spruiked free lunches, office bootcamps, Friday social clubs as employee benefits. These are no longer benefits if your employees are not there to receive them.
With a hybrid workforce becoming standard, employee recognition needs to feel legitimate and not tokenistic. It’s a basic human desire to feel appreciated, and acknowledged for the role they play within the organization.
Why use an employee rewards programme?
Bob Nelson famously said
“People may take a job for more money, but they often leave it for more recognition”
Recognition can come from management or peers. It’s not exclusively for management to recognize their employees. More often the recognition from a peer means just as much.
Other benefits of staff reward programmes include:
Increased productivity – you know the saying ‘happy wife, happy life’? It’s not just about the wife
Increased employee engagement – culture is the latest buzzword for employers, but bottom line, if your employees are happy, then great things happen
Increased loyalty – staff that feel recognized and appreciated are much likely to remain with the organization longer
What to consider when choosing a staff rewards programme?
Structure vs spontaneity
Just because you have a structured employee recognition programme doesn’t mean you can’t be spontaneous. Allow staff rewards to be given off-cycle if they are deserved. We’re all living in the here and now, and someone who deserves an accolade shouldn’t have to wait 6 months because that’s when it gets announced.
Look at how often you think you’ll legitimately be able to recognize a staff member for going over and above. The last thing you want is for your staff to feel like the awards are token and that someone has to get one.
Business goals
How does your recognition programme tie into your business goals? How does it drive the behaviours that you want to see within your organization? Does there need to be different levels of employee recognition based on the action or achievement?
Rewards vs recognition
Employee rewards are tangible items that employees receive in recognition for their action or achievement. It also allows your employee to link the specific item they’ve received or purchased directly with your organization. Where they’ve redeemed their voucher for a coffee machine, each time they use the machine they think about what they did to get that.
Employee rewards also need to be clearly communicated, and expectations understood.
Employee recognition has no monetary value but just as valued. It’s also important to take into account how this recognition is delivered. Your introverts won’t appreciate being asked to stand up in front of the organization, but will quietly beam when you recognize what they’ve done without too much of a fuss.
Building your internal brand with employee rewards
When considering your employee rewards platform, think about the demographic of your employees. More often than not a one size fits all platform.
Platforms such as CONTRIBUTE allow you to build a customized portal with your company brand. Staff continue to identify that this is associated with your brand as they browse the catalogue.
Offering a selection of choice also means that intangible your employee will attach more appreciation to the reward. They don’t just receive something that middle management, who doesn’t know how they spend their weekend, chose. They’ve got freedom of choice, and are therefore more likely to use the resulting employee reward selection.
Build a community
In one of our previous blog posts, we touched on the benefits of building a community and how other organisations have gone about this.
By choosing a solution such as CONTRIBUTE has the added benefit of giving back to the community. You can choose to partner with a local social enterprise from the platform. So whilst you’re rewarding your employees, you’re also working to support the local community through the 2% give back, plus the additional revenue to the local economy.
Additional benefits of choosing a turn-key rewards platform
There are a variety of employee reward platforms available, but there are additional benefits when it comes to turn-key reward programmes such as CONTRIBUTE
Let your employees chose a reward gift that suits them
Partner with your choice of social enterprise (2% give back)
Reduce administration of staff rewards or customer loyalty programmes with a ready-to-go platform
Want to know more? Visit our CONTRIBUTE page or drop the team an email.
