What are some non-monetary ways to incentivize employees?
I would like to find more ways to motivate my team. Additional compensation is tough right now. What have others found useful to motivate employees other than more compensation?
The Business.com team published an article on the three pillars to incentivizing employees without financial reward.
1. Recognition - employees will respond well to praise and feeling valued at the company.
2. Flexibility - promoting work-life balance will benefit the culture of the company and the productivity of employees.
3. Opportunity - providing unique learning opportunities helps employees gain professional development which can hold more value than monetary incentives at certain times.
You can read the full article here:
https://www.business.com/articles/non-monetary-ways-to-reward-employees/
When you are monetary tight, then why to give incentive even if it is kind. It is like bribing the employees.
Genuine employee look for the right salary at right time and their dues as per the job contract.
Rest all is fine.. I have seen when undue incentives are given to the staff, then the expectation becomes high and lots of complication get started.
Value your staff, treat them as individuals. What do they want. One team member might love fishing but not have time, find a way of measuring what he should do in a week and give him time off when it's achieved. Others might like golf, set up a social golf group, they pay but you allow the time to go play. A simple completion between teams with perhaps even a small trophy passed from team to team. Social events. All this costs little / no money but people feel valued, part of a community and as such are possibility more like to be loyal too.
It depends on what you do. You could make a game out of it where people can win a free medium pizza for lunch at the end of the week or month. One thing that made Google skyrocket was they decided to have an entire day of "playtime" every so often where the developers got to goof off exploring ideas. That wound up benefiting the company with tons of new innovations that boosted profits. I don't know if this is applicable to your company in some way but allowing people to work and have fun at the same time is always a great motivator. If you provide more details on what you do it would be easier to brainstorm more relevant things that would actually be applicable to what you do.
Hi Jason,
As others have mentioned, making sure employees feel appreciated is important. Giving constructive feedback is extremely helpful. Make sure that the employees that you have feel that they are cared about and have opportunities within the company to grow (i.e. an advancement path is in place, of course can be limited by company size, resources, etc.). Also, making sure employees can spend time together outside of work can be critical to creating a more unified company culture.
Kindness. Public recognition [a sign in the store window and/or on social media]. A personal 1-1 lunch with the boss.
Personal development, by far, is the best way to motivate and retain your team. Coaching, local seminars, team building, anything that involves development of the individual. It will cost a fraction of raising compensation but will pay dividends in the long run. You may have heard that adage: "What if we train our employees and they leave? What will happen if we don't?"
Give them personal and leadership development. Study the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Give them all a copy of it. Model the trust dysfunction for them. It will pay huge rewards.
I developed a reward system by using the Amway gift catalogs. A point system was set in place and once the employee accumulated points they could cash in the points for a catalog at different levels from $25 to $100. We made it a big deal at company meeting when an employee was awarded their catalog. It was a tremendous success.
The challenge? Tracking points>
Appreciation wins every time. I can show you what me and many other business people are doing to challenge the status quo.
Try to structure their jobs so each person finds the most satisfaction between your set of tasks and their non-business life.
Effectively, you have to ask your employees: "What drives your well-being?" and then work with them on creating common ground. Sometimes this can be done as a group effort, where people "join in" on projects as a reward or get organizational and "in-group" recognition for their successes.
Hello here! I have a small design business and several workers in my office and some distance-working as well. According to my own experience, one of the best ways to motivate employees is just to control them and what they do. I use the employee monitoring software from http://www.spyrix.com/employee-monitoring.php for this purpose. Workers know that I can see if they don't work properly, and they always do their best. It really works!
Autonomy is the buzz word for today. Most employees feel good having the freedom to make decisions and the TRUST you put into their ability to do things right and make great choices for the company will translate into loyalty and ownership. I believe in giving employees the freedom to even make mistakes. The fact that they are doing something wrong still translates into them doing something. Give them a trusting, non suffocating atmosphere and see them flourish.
Hi Jason,
This concept is outdated that people are motivated only through monetary benefits.
Provide them self actualization through involvement in decision making process and strategy.
Give them your trust and empower them to take leadership roles within the environment.
Pat them on their back for a work well done.
Take their advice on issues and then follow them so that they also feel involved and satisfied.
Give them training and development opportunities through job enrichment and rotation.
Involve and relate to them with your family so that they also have a sense of belonging .
There are so many things you can do . Flexible timings for attending office is also a motivation for some.
Some with younger children may find working virtually from home a bigger incentive than money.
The list will go on and on, it is just a matter of creativity on your part and influencing skills.
Best Of Luck,
Zafar
North York, Canada
647-818-8550
http://www.trinet.com/blog/2014/10/16/the-top-five-non-monetary-benefits-employees-want/
Jason: Most people appreciate feeling appreciated. I know of no better motivator than to publicly recognize someone for a job well done. Depending on the size of the team, it can be beneficial to have the team submit nominations of fellow employees, along with a story that supports the nomination, throughout the month and then selecting someone to be recognized by the executive team+HR at a company meeting or similar event where the story is also shared. I have also found it to be motivating to incentivize nominations. For example, the nominator of the individual who is awarded the recognition might be awarded a $25-50 gift certificate, immediately after recognizing the individual who the nominator praised, for dinner at a local restaurant or a pair of movie tickets. These small things seem to get folks to take the time to recognize their peers which is a low cost way to improve overall morale and to motivate a team. In the end, an individual is publicly recognized for doing great work for the company and another individual is recognized with a small token for calling out the good deeds of their fellow employees.
As Cathy said, forming caring relationships with them is key. But other ways - are you able to give them extra time off for meeting goals? Upon completion of deadlines, especially early, I've given my employees an afternoon off with pay. Help get them involved in creating deadlines and department processes; if they have input, they have more incentive to adhere to those. Find ways to give them additional training towards their personal career goals. I even had a cookout at my house for the team. They loved all of those things.
They say money works as a de-motivator but rarely is a motivator alone. Its all about relationships in my opinion. Care about them. Sometimes a random conversation - more like mentoring than employer/employee. Can you invite them to your home? What do you want to get them to do? If loyalty is your aim - its all relationships.