Creative Employee Incentives

Providing incentives for employees is a great way to boost morale, productivity, and promote a harmonious work environment. Even more importantly, offering incentives to your employees in a non-traditional and creative way allows you to keep track of improvement and reward staff for a job well done. Another great characteristic of incentives is their flexibility. Incentives don’t have to be used solely to honor an employee.

Traditionally, employee incentives come in the form of a pay increase or bonus money. While this monetary compensation can undoubtedly motivate your employees in the short term, it is by no means the only way to encourage top-notch performance from your staff.   Many employees are motivated to increase their skills and knowledge by the prospect of promotion or job enhancement. In fact, according to some studies, employees have cited various incentives besides a pay increase that motivate them to achieve goals. Some of these include:

• Recognition for hard work.
• Better work environment and working conditions.
• Job security.
• Employer contribution to a retirement plan.

In addition to these ideas, you can also create an incentive system that is tailored to the specific needs and wants of the staff in your company. A way to do this is to ask your employees, either through a survey or in a private meeting, to identify what rewards would be most meaningful to them. Include this “wish list” in their employee file. When the time comes around to show your appreciation of the employee’s hard work, you can reference this list to help you reward them in a way that they would appreciate. For example, if Rich, an agent in your contact center, loves coffee, you might want to reward his small successes with a gift card to his favorite coffee shop. Other ideas could include free movie tickets, a gift certificate to a favorite store/restaurant, or even someone’s favorite chocolate treat!

Rewards are also a good way to boost employee morale during changes within the company. If your business is implementing a new telephone sales system, for example, you can use small gifts and perks to help smooth the transition and make sure employees feel appreciated for the effort they are putting forth to adjust to a new system. Following are additional ideas for promoting success and rewarding accomplishments within your company:

• Give people their birthday off with pay. Honor them and encourage them to have fun on their special day!
• Reward agents for reporting other agents doing something well.
• For exceptional achievements or milestones, write a personal letter of acknowledgment.

Incentives motivate your employees and show them you value their contributions to the company.