Employee Recognition Gift Key Terms

Arm yourself with employee recognition gift vocabulary to make the right choices for your staff

By Darcy Chadwick

Awarding your employees with gifts can be a powerful motivator, especially if you use the type of rewards that best suit your staff. How do you know what type of reward programs to offer? Should everyone receive a gift or only a select few? Become knowledgeable of some common employee recognition gift terms so you can best answer these questions when concerns arise. You may learn that there's an incentive or reward program out there that would work well for your business.

Employee awards

Employee awards are incentives used for non-sales employees. They can be awarded for excellent safety, attendance, suggestions, quality control or productivity achievement.
Try: Learn more about employee awards, including recognition awards, at Recognition Reward Enterprises.

Incentives

Employees can often be motivated to strive for incentives while working or selling goods and services. Incentives can include merchandise, travel, cash or services offered to employees as a type of reward for their performance. Employees can achieve these incentives if they meet certain goals or exceed expectations.
Try: Learn more about how to create employee incentives at SendCoffee.

Closed-ended program

A closed-ended program is one that involves a trade, sales or employee incentive that only a predetermined amount of people can win. It is often presented in the form of a contest or sweepstakes. From a company's budgetary perspective, closed-ended programs are more profitable.
Try: Learn more about how closed-ended programs differ from open-ended ones at FIRE Light Group.

Open-ended program

An open-ended program involves a trade, sales or employee incentive in which everyone who reaches a preset goal win the prize or award.
Try: Learn more about open-ended programs at Manage Smarter.

Incremental

Incremental refers to the results that are achieved by employees. These results must exceed the expected levels, which could be as part of a group or individually.
Try: Learn why incremental awards work at The Business Group.

Gain sharing

Gain sharing refers to a particular incentive plan for employees. Groups of employees work together and are eligible to win an award based on their increased productivity, profits or efficiency.
Try: Visit BusinessTown.com to determine if gain sharing is a suitable fit for your company.