The most loyal and productive workers are those who are also happy in their jobs. When it comes to making sure your employees are happy, it doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it can be pretty easy, and you should start with the basics. Most people will respond to good pay, more time off, a good work environment, praise, and other employee benefits.
If you want your employees to feel cared for and appreciated, you can show that you care about their well-being and value the work they do by giving them incentives, rewards, and other benefits. It will also help keep employees and make the place where they work better.
It can be hard to know what to give your employees and what will actually work, so let’s look at some employee incentives that have been shown to work:
Let Them Be Responsible For Their Own Work
Yes, your employees will look to you for direction. However, they don’t usually like having a short lease and feeling like they are always being watched. Most employees will feel like they add more value and are more productive if they are in charge of their own work. Give them goals and deadlines for work to be done, but then let them do the work however they want. This is a great way to boost morale and, ultimately, keep staff. This isn’t about letting your employees do whatever they want; it’s about making sure they do their jobs as well as they can.
Reward And Recognition
Who doesn’t want to be noticed for the hard work they do? An annual awards ceremony is a great way to show your staff how much you value them. Give your employees the chance to put in a good word for a coworker, and let them do the same. Then you can set up a voting system so that everyone can choose who should get the reward each year. You could even have a night every year when the rewards are given out. This could be something your staff looks forward to. You could also offer things like a gym membership that can provide them with low impact workout on a pilates reformer to help prevent back issues from sitting at a desk, for example.
Offer A Bonus
Giving your employees the chance to get a bonus once a year is another great way to thank them. When you meet company goals and do what you set out to do for that fiscal year, rewarding your employees is a great way to show how much you appreciate the work they did to help you reach your goals. It works especially well around holidays like Christmas, when people usually need extra cash. If your employees know what goals they need to reach in order to get their bonus, this can also make them more productive. If you hit your goals and then some, you could always give the employees who contributed the most a bigger bonus.
These three employee incentives work well for any business. Do you have any others that have performed for you that you could share in the comments?