How to Incentivize Your Employees
For many employees, the daily grind simply isn’t enough to keep them motivated to work long days and weeks, no matter how successful or lucky they feel to be working for that particular company. Therefore, it is a great idea to offer incentives for your employees to keep them engaged and motivated. Here are the four best ways in which you can incentivize your employees.
Healthcare and Wellness Provision
All incentives offered to employees have the bonus of benefitting them and the company, but there is no better workforce than a healthy and happy one, which is why health and wellness provision is such an important incentive. For a wellness idea, companies have found it very beneficial to have on-site yoga classes where the employees can blow off some steam and feel energized for the next part of their day.
Gift Certificates
Gift certificates are best used when given out to your whole team for a particular milestone or celebration, such as Christmas, and not to single out employees that have excelled at a task because this can create jealousy and often demotivates the rest of the team. Gift certificates can be for anything from experiences, such as tickets to the cinema, to food vouchers from sites like Perfect Feast so that employees can enjoy a celebratory dinner with their family all paid for by you.
Bonus Days Off
Employees value their time spent with family and friends above all other benefits, therefore, offering an incentive to have more paid days off to spend with them once a target is hit will make them far more likely to work towards that goal with more focus and determination. Additional days off can also be given for ‘creative freedom’ where employees can take time out of work to focus on creating ideas that they can bring back to the office. It might be also beneficial to allow paid time off for volunteering since this shows a commitment to the community as a company as well as for the employee.
Social and Networking Events
This is a great way to get your employees together and break down the barriers to the hierarchy by enjoying one another’s company on a planned day out. It could be work-related, such as a seminar in another city that you can all attend together as an office to improve a particular aspect of work, or it could be as simple as a get-together at your local bar for happy hour. Make sure in doing this that no-one is left out, including the office janitor, assistants and interns, since the whole point is to bring everyone down to one level and have friendly, human conversation.
After reading the above incentives, you will probably be surprised at how easy it can be to motivate your team and keep them much happier and productive. It will also give your company a competitive edge as people start to notice that your company culture is really about the people and the community.
