8 No Cost or Low Cost Rewards

Everyone wants to be recognized for their efforts and successes. The feeling you have when you overcome a challenge, accomplish significant goals or exceed the expectations of others is a great feeling. The feeling you get when your peers or your boss recognizes you for it, is even better. It raises your moral and reinforces what you are doing is the right thing to do.

Celebrating the wins make all the hard work and frustrations worth it. However, when efforts and accomplishments are not recognized and the wins are rarely celebrated, it has the opposite effect. It makes you feel like what you do doesn’t matter and you are not valued. Eventually you will not put forth the same level of effort and you begin to only do the bare minimum to get by. You become disengaged and cynical towards your peers, your boss and the company as a whole.

I am sure many of you reading this have worked for a manger or company where recognition and celebration of wins was rare or non-existent. It is a mentally and emotionally draining experience and one that always ends badly for both the company and the employee. To be blunt, it is a toxic environment.

When you are in this type of toxic environment, you lose motivation to perform past the minimum expectations. You dread coming into work and you become one of the first employees to hit the door at quitting time.

Your career becomes a job.

Most organizations and leaders want their employees to feel appreciated and valued. However, organizational leaders struggle with doing this in a meaningful and consistent manner. Some just fail to be consistent and some just don’t know how. A 2017 Glassdoor survey found that 41% of employees have not been recognized for their achievements in the past 6 months or longer. The same survey also found 36% of employees do not feel appreciated or valued within the workplace.

These same employees contribute to increased turnover. They either leave the job, without notice, or are actively looking and have become significantly disengaged. Even more concerning are the employees who cannot find another job and they stay, further reducing morale.

The costs associated with high turnover and a disengaged workforce are staggering, especially when compared to the relatively low costs associated with ensuring your workforce feels appreciated and valued. Over the years I have worked with countless leaders, managers and supervisors and I have witnessed so many missed opportunities to recognize great employees who are giving 110% every day. I have watched these same employees burn out and walk away because of it.

When I am coaching these leaders, managers and supervisors there are usually reasons why and they mostly revolve around how they didn’t realize how little they celebrated the wins.

I get it…business happens and priorities are always changing. When this happens you become stuck in the weeds and forget about the human aspect of leading. We have all been there. But we must make this a priority if we want to maintain an engaged and productive workforce.

“I really don’t understand why I need to constantly tell them I appreciate them. They are paid well and that is all I really owe them.”

“We don’t have the money to throw away like that.”

“I’m not here to hold their hands and make them feel happy. I’m here to make sure they do their jobs and we meet our bottom line.”

I have heard these three statements on more occasions than I would like to admit. As leaders, when we hear these or similar statements we need to recognize it for what it is.

A red flag.

We need to re-evaluate our culture and how we cultivate our managers and leaders. If you are leading people, motivating and positively influencing them is one of your main responsibilities. Showing authentic appreciation by recognizing and properly incentivising employees is an investment in a major resource…because your employees are your main resource. Without them, you would be out of a job.

In the same Glassdoor survey mentioned earlier, it found 81% of employees are more satisfied with work when they are recognized because it makes them feel appreciated and valued. These same employees are 60% more productive than their disengaged counter-parts…doesn’t it seem fiscally irresponsible for us NOT to ensure we are recognizing our employees?

For small businesses this can be tricky, as budgets are tighter and options are limited. However, showing you care does not mean you need to break the bank. Here are eight no cost and low cost employee recognition rewards and incentives that truly work.

1.      Peer to Peer Recognition Program: This is one of my favorite employee reward programs. This isn’t some “Employee of the month” system…those hardly ever work to boost morale or incentivise employees to succeed. This program, however, is peer run and the recognition is peer to peer. There are many ways you can accomplish this, with one of the most utilized methods being a “brag box”. This is where your peers will write something positive about other employees, related to work, and at the end of the week or month the supervisor or manager reads these out loud to all employees for public recognition.

2.      Hand Written Thank You Notes: This is actually one of the most appreciated types of recognition employees receive. Many employees appreciate being thanked and recognized for their hard work, but to have it done in writing has a different effect. Doing this via email just doesn't have the same impact. If done in email, many employees feel it is more for the person giving the recognition than the person receiving it….with hand written thank you notes, it is personal, one on one, and the perception of it being for the receiver is greater. I do this often and the positive effects are seen almost immediately.

3.      Extra Time Off: This can be something as simple as giving the employee an extended lunch or break, to adjusting start and leave times for a period of time. I have practiced this for years and it is always appreciated by the employee. If you have an employee that is going above and beyond, send them home early or give them an extended break. It goes further than you think.

4.      Relief of Duties: There is nothing more satisfying, as an employee, than having your boss do your job for you out of appreciation for what you do. When I was younger, I had a manager come up to me and tell me to take a break he began taking over the task I was doing. I asked him if I was doing something wrong and he said “No, you have been doing an excellent job and I figured I would take over for a little bit so you could take a break…you earned it.” That event has stuck with me and influenced how I treat my employees. Taking over duties for an employee, as a sign of appreciation, not only gains respect from the employee it also builds teamwork, gains loyalty and trust…and there is no cost to the company.

5.      Pick a Project: Give an employee, who is a high performer, priority choice over projects. I knew a manager who did this on a regular basis and would always have the highest performing team. The reason is he rewarded his top performers with choosing their tasks, before the rest of the team. When he first started this, his team members were skeptical, however after a few weeks of seeing one or two high performers choose the best tasks or projects he saw other team members start to step up their game. They didn’t want to be stuck with the left over jobs no one wanted. This reward increased productivity and employee ownership over their work…they chose the job, so they had more ownership over its success.

6.      Paid Time Off: This is kind of a given…everyone likes to have more paid time off and in the huge scheme of things, it’s relatively low cost. This reward results in a better return in the form of employee morale and increased loyalty, productivity, and respect. If you walk up to an employee, who has been going above and beyond, and you tell them to take a free paid day off you will be amazed at the gratitude and increased productivity you will receive from that employee.

7.      Leadership Opportunity: For some employees the reward of responsibility has more meaning than other rewards. If you have an up and coming employee, who is eager to grow and move up, give that employee a chance to lead a small group on a project, lead a meeting, conduct a training session that highlights their abilities, etc. Some employees want to be recognized for their accomplishments and are motivated by tasks that let them shine.

8.      Gift Cards: Giving gift cards are a low cost reward for on the spot recognition of employees. I had an employer who would hand out $25 gift cards to employees, daily, for various reasons. Some of these would be visa gift cards and some would be gift cards to local restaurants. If he saw an employee handle a difficult customer in a professional and positive manner, he would give them a gift card. If he found employees going above and beyond, he would hand them a gift card. There would also be days where he would call over the intercom and ask a random trivia question. The employee who got to his office first with the correct answer would receive a $100.00 gift card. I’m not saying you should go to the extent of this example, however I can say it was one of the best jobs I ever had AND it wasn’t because of the gift cards…it was because of the overall positive atmosphere.

As I have shown, rewarding your employees doesn’t have to break the bank. You can still make a big impact on your employees’ morale and productivity while maintaining your bottom line. The most effective rewards are the ones that have meaning for the employee and touch them at some level. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and be creative with your rewards…you will be surprised how well it is received, if the employees can tell it wasn’t just thrown together.