Incentive programs employees ideas

In this article, we explore why employee incentives are important, the incentives you can consider and some ideas to keep employees motivated. An employee incentive is a way for managers to reward team members for exceeding expectations. Employee incentives can come in the form of recognition and praise, additional compensation or any reward that helps an employee to continue their productivity.

Depending on your reason for incentivizing employees, you could implement a long-term program or offer a one-time reward for achieving a specific milestone.

Both team and individual incentives are common in the workplace. Here are some positive outcomes related to a developed employee incentive program:. Employees feel motivated when they know they are working toward a particular incentive. Employees have different motivating factors, so a certain incentive may motivate one employee over another. It's important to have a few incentives in place to make sure that employees remain motivated, no matter what drives them in their work.

When you introduce incentives into the workplace, employees are more likely to feel valued and that they're a productive part of the team.

They want to succeed either individually or with their team to earn a group incentive. You can expect employees to come to work and excel in their daily tasks when you employ incentives. With an increase in job satisfaction, employees are happier to spend their days at work with their team and usually have fewer attendance issues. Create incentives for entire groups to encourage collaboration and teamwork.

Having group incentives should motivate employees to meet team goals, collaborate on important projects and develop positive working relationships. Read more: 6 Tips for Effective Teamwork. To develop an incentive plan that works, follow these steps:. When developing incentive plans, ask your team members what motivates them to create a more focused approach. Have a meeting with your employees to discuss what drives them, or send them a survey so they feel comfortable responding with honest answers.

While it's important to consider what motivates an employee's work, incentive plans also need to focus on improving the company. When you're developing your incentive plan, ask yourself the following questions:. Are there communication barriers that we can improve? Creating a long-term budget ensures you offer consistent incentives.

You can offer low-cost incentives, like preferred parking or a gift card, that works with most budgets while keeping employees happy. Determine how employees or teams will receive any incentives and develop goals to help employees earn their incentives. The goals should be specific and measure performance. Use KPIs or quotas to accurately measure progress. Maybe the reward is a blue shirt at the end of every year. The more years each employee has worked at your company, the darker their shirt.

Then set aside a day for everyone to wear their blue shirts. This promotes a sense of comradery, provides the long-time employees with a pat on the back, and gives new employees something to shoot for. One company offers the following benefits to the spouse of a deceased employee:. That employee incentive program may be unrealistic for small- and mid-size businesses, but perhaps the idea of it will inspire you to create a similar perk that works for you.

This gives employees time to relax and visit family, prevents them from mentally checking out between the two holidays, and helps them work harder in the new year. Additionally, chances are that many of the companies you do business with will also be closed during this week.

That means less work gets done, productivity suffers, and your team members will wonder why they came in. Take the week off to avoid all the problems and stress that the holidays can bring.

They could walk, bike, rollerblade, carpool, take the train, or ride the bus. If they do, they are reimbursed the cost of that transportation up to a set amount per day in their paycheck. When your employees are relaxed, they are better able to focus on the job at hand.

If you want better focus and better work, bring in a masseuse once a week to give free or minute massages to all team members. Some companies subscribe to the adage that innovation requires inspiration.

To keep the creative juices flowing, include an inspiration account in your employee incentive program. Provide each team member with a set amount of money that can be used to further their personal growth.

Yoga lessons? Guitar lessons? Monday is laundry day at one Venice, California-based media company. After a long weekend of fun in the sun, all 80 employees can turn in their clothes to be washed, dried, pressed, and returned to them by the end of the day. When you offer the option of flexible scheduling to your employees, you give them a bit of freedom within a very structured system. Ditching the , or at least being flexible about when hours are worked, helps your team members feel in control of their own schedule.

Here are a few examples of flexible schedules that might work in your business:. Flexible work hours are a wonderful incentive for your employees, but they are also a nightmare to schedule. Instead, incorporate a cloud-based employee management app, like Sling , to give you and your employees the ability and freedom to create the schedule that works for your business.

Employees can access Sling anytime from their phones, mobile devices, or desktop computers. They can request time off, find their own substitutes, tweak their schedules to fit their needs, and so much more. It also gives you, the manager , the ability to track the hours your employees have worked without your physically being there. This power and flexibility even extend into the next entry on our employee-incentive-program list. With the proliferation of the internet and the interconnectivity of all things, telecommuting has never been easier.

This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. Hit enter to search or ESC to close. Close Search. Page Contents Click To Jump. About SnackNation SnackNation is a healthy office snack delivery service that makes healthy snacking fun, life more productive, and workplaces awesome.

Connor Garrett January 13, Connor Garrett January 11, Carri Helman January 6, Leave a Reply Cancel Reply. Handcrafted in Los Angeles. Share via. Copy Link. Powered by Social Snap. Copy link. Copy Copied. Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Strictly Necessary Cookies Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

Enable or Disable Cookies. Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website. Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!