Did you know that recent studies suggest that only 52% of employees are satisfied with the recognition they receive for doing their job? Employee engagement is crucial to a successful business. Help your business grow by increasing satisfaction and wellness in your employees with a rewards program.
Don’t give the thought that rewarding your employees will make them soft or that it isn’t a good business practice. Rewards programs aren’t just for HR anymore, though you can certainly ask for their input as you establish the best practices for your specific program.
Ther are many ways to boost enthusiasm and employees with rewards programs and here are 5 reasons why you should use them in your business and company.
1. Everyone Wants to Feel Valued
Rewards don’t have to be complicated, but rewarding your staff can help them feel valued. Begin with recognizing the longevity of your employee’s time spent with your company by celebrating their service anniversaries. It should be easy to keep track of the hire dates and acknowledge them for their long-standing time with you.
How you recognize these anniversaries can vary. Perhaps a handwritten card from the president and a small token of your appreciation. Things as simple as going out to lunch to celebrate are always a nice touch, making the celebration personal can be a great benefit that employees and staff enjoy.
Acknowledgment of their time with you says that you notice their hard work and longevity. Gift cards and other optional gift packages offer incentive rewards for employees and show your honored employees that you value their contribution to your department or company. Placing value on the time an employee has dedicated to your business is a small way of rewarding them.
Pay attention to what your employees want in celebrating their time with you, a little recognition and reward can go a long way for employee wellness and job satisfaction. Obviously, the rewards can grow exponentially, rewarding those that have worked for you the longest with larger gifts.
2. Rewards are Motivational
Sure, getting a paycheck is the motivation for anyone to go to work. But if meeting the bare minimum still pays the bills what can motivate your representatives to push themselves to go that extra mile? Rewards!
Whether you choose a sales promotion or contest, which not only, boosts your sales but also offers them a chance to win a set prize of your choice can be an extremely motivational tool. Competitions can be a fun way to not only engage your employees but motivate them to work harder and earn rewards.
Humans are naturally competitive and when they are more engaged in their role at a company they can use their motivation to find more job satisfaction. There is research to suggest that having immediate rewards available can be even more motivational to employees than the promise of a reward or bonus in the future.
It makes sense when you are being rewarded that you would continue to work hard to prove you earned that prize, so your future efforts are also improved by a single reward. Motivation doesn’t have to come at a great cost either, look at your business model and set up a reward system that works for your company.
Having an increase in productivity and engagement is going to be to the benefit of your company so find a way to motivate your staff. With a little creative brainpower, you’re sure to tweak your rewards program in a way that both motivates and encourages your employees.
3. Less Staff Turnover
People who are engaged and motivated to do well are less likely to want to leave and look for another job. Depending on your specific company or industry it could take a lot of training to have new employees do everything just right. Why risk not being able to fill a position or hiring someone who isn’t on par with your current employee base?
The best strategy is preemptive intervention: let your rewards program compel your workforce to stay. Whether you consider your benefits package to be all the reward necessary or you have other options up your sleeve, employees who are highly engaged and are satisfied in their current position aren’t likely to actively job search.
Recruiting and interviewing isn’t anyone’s favorite activity so avoid your voluntary turnover and reward your employees to prevent that from happening. It can be easy as a company to reward your sales force but don’t overlook the remainder of your employees as well.
In fact, oversight and lack of rewards for other departments (think marketing, customer service, and even your warehouse staff) can lead them to disengage and not perform their own tasks to the best of their capabilities. Rewards may not look the same for all your full team but it’s certainly possible to find a reward that will work for all staff members.
Ultimately keeping your employees in your workforce will save you money by not losing time to interview, hire, and train new staff. Stop onboarding new staff when you could simply reward your current staff!
4. Rewards Expect Greatness
When your company has a reward program in place you can begin to expect greatness, especially if one reward possibility is an employee recognition program. You need to plan something as specific as “employee of the month” though that can be a useful strategy. Recognition can come from managers or even co-workers.
Knowing that you could be rewarded and recognized for doing your job well can be encouraging for teams and allow them to aim for greatness. It’s important to set the bar high and have people exceed expectations than being satisfied with lackluster performance standards.
When people are recognized for their service there is also a bond formed between those who nominated the staff member and the person who was recognized. Establishing relationships is important for a team to find great work and life balance and have people enjoy their careers. Happy employees are satisfied and will rise to greatness.
5. Customer Satisfaction
It may seem strange that your employees enjoying their jobs could make a difference in your overall sales and relationship with customers but the two go hand in hand. When employees are stressed about their job performance they become less engaged and active with your customers. Customers can pick up on employees’ stress or indifference.
However, when a business representative is excited to be at work and actively working towards meeting their own goals to earn a reward, your customers respond highly to enthusiastic employees. Rewarded employees are engaged, employees. Engaged employees perform better and are overall more likely to have a positive effect on the customer experience.
If you’re really thinking long term for your rewards program you can also create rewards for your customers as well as your own staff members. Loyalty and engagement is not only an internal consideration, keeping every angle of your business engaged is a great option no matter which way you look at it.
Conclusion
Success starts with employees, create a ripple effect that will benefit everyone by using a rewards program. The key to keeping employees happily working and engaged with your company is to find ways to reward them and show them they are valued. If you are looking to improve employee wellness, you will want to use a reward program.
Author Bio: Gabe Nelson
Photo Credit: Dozemode from Pixabay
