Do you want to improve employee engagement? Understand the importance of staff rewards and giving back to the people who do the work!

The workforce is the bread and butter of an organisation’s success, and without it, any enterprise is doomed to collapse. So why is it that so many companies fail to realise a brilliant employee engagement programme is an absolute necessity to drive productivity and prosperity?

Rewards management is a key component to a healthy employee engagement strategy (and great for customer engagement too).

Wikipedia refers to Michael Armstrong and Helen Murlis’s definition of ‘reward management’ as “the formulation and implementation of strategies and policies that aim to reward people fairly, equitably and consistently in accordance with their value to the organization.” It involves employee ‘remuneration,’ ‘compensation’ and ‘benefits,’ and includes perks, gifts and rewards.

For improved productivity and engagement. Rewards schemes sweeten the deal, making the contract more appealing (the hook not only to catch the fish but to keep them swimming happily in your aquarium) – they are a dollop of whipped cream and cherry on top of the remunerations package.

Why? Reward schemes:

▸ Entice top talent ▸ Enhance engagement ▸ Increase productivity ▸ Strengthen retention, thus thwarting unnatural attrition (or swim to warmer waters).

What not to do

How many ‘bonus’ systems turn out to be ‘bogus’ systems? This sounds more like an ‘exit question’ that can be avoided by implementing a smart employee engagement strategy meant to retain your employees. A smart strategy consists of a win-win programme that develops trust by making rewards achievable. Like trust, success is a two-way system that past, unsuccessful rewards management schemes have lost sight of. For an organisation’s overall team success, employees have to be successful in their individual, daily roles. Cultivating a happy, healthy, productive ethos is through cohesion.

▸ Don’t foster a cut-throat competitive culture that venerates a singular winner ▸ Don’t favour a ‘natural’ over-achiever over all the others – use the outlier who is just as bright a star when given the opportunity to shine

• Don’t be friends with only some of your employees – management should be a friend to all (or a friend to none if you want to take the Machiavellian approach)
• Don’t financially incentivise the few over the many ▸ Don’t forget to use onecode – a system for everyone.

The ‘how to’ for rewarding your employees

The rewarding employees concept we know is simple, as is the theory behind it. How to do staff rewards is simple too – recognise all employees equally for the efforts they put into the company. If others do more, give them extra to compensate according to the determined scale. Use onecode for your rewards scheme Follow these expert suggestions and your organisation’s reward management will have your employees surpassing your minimum expectations with actuated fiscal gains

Staff rewards The question ‘how much to spend?’ confuses many and anxiety for companies on a tighter budget than others. Using the onecode system will eliminate this confusion and anxiety because it was created to work for you. The onecode has the flexibility of being as much or as little as you need because it’s designed to be used as either a one-gift shopping experience or like an e-wallet to build up an employee’s bankable balance for a bigger reward, to be used and re-used like a debit card. Now to answer your other questions...

When to reward

Make your rewards frequently achievable and reward as and when the achievement is reached. The immediate reward is not only a great way to train a puppy, it is effective for humans too. This doesn’t mean that every reward has to be a big expense or a big song and dance. It should be a recurring practice that your employees can rely on. This will develop trust and continued workflow.

With the onecode system, your employees can see their thank-yous turn from a momentary feel-good to longer-term rewards and something they can continue to work toward while receiving incremental benefits along the way.

Who to reward

Give to anyone and everyone who deserves a thank you. Simply Thank You’s onecode reward and recognition management is designed to be as simple as that.

Intrigued? We'd love to show you how we've helped global brands and businesses to get rewards right. Speak to us today!