Employee Rewards: Give your Employees what They Really want

Keeping employees engaged and finding innovative ways to connect with your team are two issues many companies face today. To truly affect your engagement levels, recognition and rewards need to be a part of your company’s daily culture. Regularly recognizing your team for the good work that they’re doing is a crucial step in making your employees feel valued. If they feel appreciated their hard work, they’ll strive to do better. And Forbes agrees – below are the three reasons why employee recognition is so crucial for the success of companies today:

• Recognized employees are happy employees – and happy employees are approximately 12% more productive than ones that aren’t.
• Appreciative leaders are appreciated leaders – Almost 90% of employees (surveyed by the WorkHuman Research Institute) who received recognition from their boss, indicated higher levels of trust in that boss.
• When employees feel recognized, they stick around – It can be costly to recruit and train new employees (an estimated $4,129 for every new hire, not counting lost productivity), especially when your staff turn-over is high. Recognition is a relatively inexpensive, yet meaningful way you can make your employees feel respected and valued.

 Why Employee Rewards Sometimes Fail

Sometimes, over-eager businesses get it wrong when they decide to implement employee recognition. The following three are some of the reasons, as identified by FastCompany, why rewards and recognition programs can fail:

• Assuming you know what your employees want – Just because a particular employee rewards initiative seems like a good idea, doesn’t mean that your employees will agree. And not all employees will necessarily want the same sort of rewards or recognition.
• Too many employee contests – Although contests could foster some healthy competition amongst colleagues, it has the potential to backfire, especially when staff start performing only to receive rewards or when these initiatives start to result in more disappointed non-winners than satisfied achievers. Fast Company suggests that “It isn’t about rewarding winners (people), it’s about rewarding excellence (performance).”
• Recognition often arrives late and can sound generic – Recognition should be offered as and when employees perform well, and it should be meaningful and personal, which will have a far greater impact on the general level of motivation in a team than group (read: bulk) recognition.

The best way to determine what your employees would value is, simply, to ask them. A short employee poll could offer valuable feedback, which is one of the reasons why Ezzely includes poll functionality in their employee engagement app. Set up your question/s and instantly send them out to your employees for faster feedback than traditional survey methods. Once you’ve determined what your employees want, evaluate whether your business is in a position to offer employees’ suggested methods recognition – whether it’s to receive gift cards, a day off, or tickets to a non-work-related event. The Ezzely recognition functionality further makes employee rewards delivery easier and more personalized, where employees can redeem points for rewards that cater to a variety of preferences. Check out our website and schedule a demo today!