8 Ways to Turn Employee Awards into Effective Motivators
Employee awards can be powerful motivators in the workplace. They can help increase employee engagement, reduce attrition, deliver better results from employees, increase revenues and improve the percentage of shareholder return. These programs can help improve individual performance, which, in turn, can lead to better organizational performance. That is, if the award program is planned, implemented and monitored correctly.
Here are some tips on building an effective employee award program:
1. The award program is the perfect opportunity for you to express the company’s values and goals; and to encourage everyone to align their individual goals with that of the organization. It should be a way to show employees that you are all on the same team.
2. Plan your incentive strategy well. Identify the specific results that you want. These can be figures that you would like your team to deliver. Or they can be behaviors and results that you want employees to modify. They can also be behaviors that you want the employees to continue. Which behaviors or results do you want to encourage? What rewards can you offer? How can the employees achieve the reward? How are you going to deliver the incentives to the top performers? During this stage, you also need to figure out how frequent the delivery of the rewards will be; if it’s going to be weekly, monthly, quarterly and so on. Or maybe the reward will be delivered as soon as one of the employees achieves a specific figure or goal.
3. Determine the results that you are after and then find the corresponding measurable elements. These measurable elements will be the targets or goals – which should be specific and measurable – of the incentive program.
4. There are a number of programs to choose from: Employee of the Week or Month or Year, Spot Recognition, Peer Recognition, Years of Service, Birthday/Special Occasion Awards and Employee Referrals. Or you may want to devise a quota-based program. Always have awards programs for recognizing both team and individual performance. And work towards long-term award programs because they yield higher percentages of performance increase.
5. Consider quota-based employee awards programs. Programs that are based on quotas produce great results because the target to achieve is specific, clear and easy to understand; and it typically lets everyone participate and have a chance at the recognition.
6. Devise the rules of the award program. Review carefully. Rules should be easy to understand, straightforward and uncomplicated.
7. Plan promotional activities for the incentive program. This is not much different from launching a new product. You need to tell your employees exactly what the program’s goals are and what the rules are for winning the reward. You need to emphasize that the process is fair, objective and transparent.
8. Work on creating a good training program for the incentive program. The company should show support to the program by making resources for training and support available. There should also be an effective feedback and monitoring system in place in order to track improvements in performance.
Resource:
Hannah is a HR Specialist, who manages employees performance review and other related human resources services to keep competitive staff on board and rewarded.
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