Your employees wake up every day and come to work in your company. Besides paycheck, they probably crave to be recognized for their effort. Some of them may not deserve it, but there are always those who go beyond the call of duty and that kind of behavior should be rewarded.

First thing that you need to know that it’s not always only about the money. You can get someone a pay bump for a moth, but you can’t keep it up every month, because that’s called a raise and it usually comes with more responsibility in the form of promotion. If you are willing to give someone a permanent higher paycheck that’s also fine and I doubt your employee will argue, but just know there are other effective ways that can save you money, but still make your employee feel rewarded.

So what should I do then?

There are a variety of ways to reward people for the quality of the work they do in the workplace. For example, rewards can be in the form of money, benefits, time off from work, acknowledgement for work well done, affiliation with other workers or a sense of accomplishment from finishing a major task.

Guidelines to Rewarding Employees

There is not a set of standard rewards to be used for employees everywhere. Instead, each person has his/her own nature and needs. The following guidelines will help you to determine what might be the best ways to reward your employees.

Here are some ideas:

1. Reward employees by letting them hear positive comments from customers about how the employees’ activities benefited the customer.

2. Occasionally have a Board member come to an employee meeting to thank them. This usually means a lot to employees, almost as much as having customers provide positive feedback about the employees’ activities.

3. Understand what motivates each of your employees. A major benefit of this approach is that each employee is afforded the opportunity to explain what motivates him or her.

4. In each monthly staff meeting, take a few minutes to open the meeting by mentioning major accomplishments of various employees.

5. Present gift certificates to employees who have made major accomplishments. Guidelines for determining who gets this reward should be clearly explained in your personnel policies in order to ensure all employees perceive the practice as fair and equitable. Allow employees to recommend other employees for awards.

6. Probably the most fulfilling for employees is to be able to do useful work. Be sure that each employee understands the mission of the business and how his/her work is contributing to that mission. Post your mission statement on the walls. Discuss the action-planning section of your strategic plan with employees so that they see how their activities tie directly to achieving the strategic goals of the organization.

Thanks to www.managementhelp.org

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