Rewarding team members who go above and beyond to achieve specific milestones makes them feel special and, in turn, inspires them to work harder to achieve all of their (and your) goals.
If a company doesn't know what makes its employees feel valued, how can it hope to retain those employees? In today’s high-churn job market, employee rewards programmes aren't just about anniversaries and awards; they're about creating a positive work environment, ensuring that products and services are delivered to clients in the best way possible, and creating a high-performing atmosphere for employees and customers alike.
Start by asking your team how they would like to be rewarded
When it comes to team incentives, it’s important to consult the people that make up the team! The best way to do that is by sending out a survey for all employees to answer. The process of identifying and implementing the most successful rewards solution takes a little time and effort, but it’s worth it in the long run. The key is to get a feel for how your team would like to be rewarded. It’s important to make sure that whatever the idea, it’s meaningful enough to drive performance but also simple enough to ensure you can implement it without too much hassle.
Align your loyalty programme with your overall business goals
Everyone wants their rewards programme to be a success, but success can be a very vague term on its own. Make sure you’re heading in the right direction by defining what success looks like for your team and your business. Sometimes, it's about growing your business - acquisition, for example. Sometimes, it's about increasing employee loyalty. And other times, it's about contributing to a specific company culture. You’ll need to define all of your goals and order them according to priority in order to ensure that your employee loyalty programme will deliver the results you seek.
Team up with a loyalty partner that can manage the logistics for you
Rewards programmes have a lot of moving parts - rewards, deadlines, and progress towards goals. It's best not to leave all of this up to your HR department to remember alone. An effective reward system needs some sort of infrastructure, such as systems to remind people of the rewards they can earn, systems that track what they've done to earn a reward and indicators that show how far they have to go before they can cash it in. It, therefore, pays to team up with a rewards programme partner who has the know-how to manage the logistics and ensure that your rewards programme is running at optimum efficiency.
Ready to get started, but not sure who to approach to set up your employee rewards programme? Chat to a friendly Randgo team member to establish how a rewards programme can benefit your business and get started on your journey to maximum employee motivation.
Set attainable milestones and goals
One of the key elements that make an employee rewards system successful is its ability to connect with the wider needs of the workforce. Rewarding people for solving problems is a great idea, but only if their problems are actually related to your company's product or service. Setting necessary benchmarks and attainable goals allow employees to have a sense of security, but it should also be easy enough for them to succeed.
Get started with a bang
To make sure your rewards programme is effective, you have to communicate with every team member about the reward scheme. You can’t expect people to know about it if you don’t tell them. To get started, organise an exciting launch event to drum up enthusiasm and go over the details of the scheme. Follow that up by sending a company-wide email, and feel free to talk openly about your rewards and incentives at company meetings - especially when a team member has achieved something great. The idea is to keep your team members informed and your rewards programme front of mind.
Request feedback and adjust where necessary
To keep your loyalty programme up-to-date, always make sure you're getting regular feedback from both your rewards programme partner and your employees. This will help you identify any problems or low-performance areas within your programme and allow you to make the necessary adjustments to keep everyone satisfied. By asking for regular feedback, you can tweak your programme to ensure that all benefits or rewards on offer are popular and valued. This should ideally be done anonymously to encourage honest and open feedback from your team.
Employee loyalty is critical, and without a strong rewards programme in place, businesses risk not retaining their most valuable assets. A successful employee rewards programme builds a sense of belonging, purpose and camaraderie among employees that helps create better teams and stronger businesses. With the right strategy in place, it can also help develop talent and attract new hires from across generations.
