How To Reward Your Team
One of my favorite HR books is 1001 Ways To Reward Employees. It goes through 1001 ways that you can recognize your team starting from ideas that cost no money to others that start getting more expensive.
One thing I’ve found with my team is the actions that you reward get repeated so you want to make sure you’re rewarding the right thing!
I have two high school interns, for example, who work with many of my customers. What I started doing a few months ago was putting a line at the bottom of all the emails that they send out that reads:
“How am I doing? If you’ve had a good or bad experience working with me please tell Andrew at (email).”
Every time they do a good enough job for one of my customers to write in, I print off the customer email, make a small announcement in the office and reward the intern $10 for the job well done.
For a high school student, it’s a nice reward and it can quickly add up as they continue to do a good job! Yes, I’m out of pocket a little bit of money but how much is customer satisfaction worth? The interns now have an incentive to provide better service because they know they will get rewarded for doing so.
Every quarter I also give all my staff members different appreciation gifts - some get Amazon gift certificates because they are big book readers, others get ebay gift certificates because they are constantly bidding on different items, and others get gifts based on what they’ve been talking about in the office (ie. movie passes for one team member who has been working very hard and needs a break!).
These gifts are usually pretty small in monetary value ($20-$50) but the recognition helps motivate them to continue to perform and keeps the morale high in the office.
The quarterly gifts have worked out well as a general “Thank you for your loyalty” but the performance based ones are having an even greater impact! My next challenge is figuring out how to implement a performance based reward system for technical and editorial staff who are not directly tied to customers or revenue. The behavior I reward will get repeated over and over again so I want to make sure I’m picking the right behavior!
If you haven’t already established a rewards program you should try it out! It can be as simple as someone getting a trophy on their desk until someone else earns the right to have it or giving people hand written, thoughtful notes. You can promise to do something out of character if you reach a certain goal and money, of course, is also a great incentive but remember it doesn’t have to be much to get them going.
Have you tried any kind of performance based incentive programs with your team members?
Evan CarmichaelYoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager
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4 Comments so far
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Hi, Maybe it’s because I’m English and not American, but personally having my manager write ‘Please rate my performance’ at the bottom of my emails would be awful! I’m a great believer that if you treat people like children, they will behave like children.
I’m now self-employed, but I would find the idea of being ‘rewarded’ in this way very demeaning. It almost sounds like training an animal to perform tricks.
In my previous job our boss tried to implement a rewards scheme. The incentive was there, but the target was never achievable and we quicker felt it was a waste of time even trying to achieve them.
I think performance based rewards, when done correctly can work well. However they need to be achievable and not invade too much on the personal space of the employee.
Evan’s Response:
Hi Tom - thanks for the feedback and congrats on stepping out and forming your own business!
The key here is that the rewards are very much within reach. If your former boss made it impossible to reach the rewards then it was a flawed system.
My interns love the ability to make more money and it doesn’t really take that much extra effort - just make sure the customer is happy working with you and be responsive to their needs.
I think any employee who deals with customers and is afraid of negative customer feedback isn’t going to last long in their position.
So far the program has worked out wonderfully and has helped create an even greater customer-centric work culture.
I would encourage you to look at your own rewards / incentive program for your business as you grow your company and bring on staff. Again, make sure the rewards are attainable (unlike your old boss) and remember that the actions you reward will be repeated to select the appropriate actions.
You should set challenging yet attainable goals.
When a goal/reward is achieved it should feel like you’ve had to work for it and through this you grow as a person too.
I agree with Tom’s comments about the “Rate My Performance” caption. It would NOT work in the UK and would just be laughed out. That’s not to say that we don’t like receiving feedback in the UK because we do but like with all things “It’s how you say it” that counts. So we would have to change the wording for it to work but in principle it’s a great idea - it’s just the cultural implementation that would need to change.
I also reward my staff as and when good things happen. I don’t wait for a couple of months to give an appreciation gift - I reward there and then because it has a huge impact on them. A regular quartlerly gift becomes common place and the element of surprise is lost but I understand where you are coming from.
Gee, us Brits sound a cynical lot!
Having said that it just shows you the nuances and differences in culture and the approach you need to take to make things work
Sean
Hi, Evan
I worked for a large company for 9 years that was brilliant at recognizing employees. There is no question that this culture correlates to its well-known stellar customer satisfaction track record.
The “being recognized by the boss” rewards are great, but we saw even more traction with being recognized by each other. The “You’re The Best” award was a monthly recognition of the person who received the most notes from co-workers thanking him/her for anything from “moving that file cabinet” to “delivering that report faster than expected.” Even more special is that leadership put incredibly emphasis on this award, scheduling a monthly full-staff breakfast to announce the award.
Thanks for opening the conversation on this. It’s a crucial topic for businesses, especially during trying times.
Sidra
I am absolutely with you on employee appreciation. I know of excellent employees who chose to change jobs simply because they felt unappreciated. Nothing like a good word for good effort and sometimes all it takes is an email or a warm public pat on the back. In its bid to appreciate the employees in our company, this year the company gifted everyone an ipod, nothing fancy, they bought them from www.ipodyourlife.co.in/make_it.aspx and I know for sure that they made wonderful corporate gifts as appreciation.