4 Ways You Can Reward Your Employees

Happiness in the workplace is an important factor towards the success of your firm. Start with a positive company culture, praise high performers and add in some employee benefits to retain your talent. 

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Making your employees feel appreciated and well looked after is often the key to success. Simply giving them incentives and benefits can prove to them that you are concerned about their wellbeing and in turn, it will help reduce employee turnover. It can, however, be confusing to know which incentives are best for the staff you have. After all, everyone is different, and what works for one business won't always work for another. 

It's important that you take your employees' thoughts and feelings into consideration and don't just choose what works best for you. At the end of the day, it's a benefit for them not what's easy for you. Going with the largest portion of staff that agree with an incentive or benefit is a good place to begin. 

You should ideally look at your options and choose options that are hard not to like, you don't even have to offer monetary rewards, in fact, it's a good idea to offer a variety of benefits that your staff can pick and choose from. 

Here are four ways to reward your employees: 

1. Give Them More Independence 

Employees don't tend to respond well from a short lease, and although during times such as training it's hard to extend this, your employees are more likely to perform if they feel as though they have more Independence. Yes, you should be guiding them and informing them of targets etc, but you should then allow them to independently get the job done. Even allowing them to create their own work schedule could be seen as an incentive to be more productive and loyal. Flexible.working is a great way to do this, as long as work is completed and hours are fulfilled try adopting a flexible approach that allows your staff to work the hours that they want. Obviously this won't work for all industries but you can still enable them to build up flexible and additional leave. 

2. Incentivise Development Opportunities

Education and Development Opportunities are a great way to incentivise, people like to learn after school, college and university but don't often get the chance once they're working. There are always going to be employees who want to move up in the business and development is a great way to promote this. Having the option open to move up in a job role is very motivating and pushed employees to do well. This is seen as a win-win for most businesses as providing an opportunity to learn not only keeps them engaged and happy it also creates better-skilled 

3. Provide Benefits For Commuters

It can be very easy for employers to disregard the fact that for their employees their day starts from the moment they leave their home to the moment they get back. Their commute is a big part of their day, and at times it can be the most stressful. The commute can have a massive effect on their well-being and they want to be at work. It could be a good idea to offer an employee benefit that helps with the cost of travel or offers upgrades to their tickets, all commuter benefits are tax-free benefits so they won’t be paying taxes and will ultimately save them money.

4. Add Performance Bonuses

This is probably one of the most common ways that employers reward their employees. Offering rewards for good performance and achievements is a great way to motivate your staff and show that you appreciate the work they are doing. This doesn't mean that they have to be monetary either. Speak to your employees and see what they would like some might like extra days off, tickets to a show, a weekend away or a spa break. Always ask your staff and even give them the choice, make everything of equal value or valued depending on the reward you want to give, for example giving an extra day off for someone who always goes the extra mile to complete work or offering a weekend away to someone who has achieved employee of the month/year. 

These four areas are all fantastic ways to incentivise and reward your employees, there are others, you've just got to remember that communication is the key when it comes to rewarding your staff. At the end of the day, they're going to know what will motivate them more than you. 

Do you have any successful benefits or incentives that currently work well in your business? Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.