In order to incentivise and retain top performers and to motivate your team, it is a good strategy to recognise and reward them monetarily and non-monetarily. Traditionally, companies use various forms of monetary and non-monetary rewards to recognise and appreciate employee’s efforts and achievements.
But in the present scenario, with the pandemic disrupting businesses across the globe, companies are cutting down expenses. Budgets have been tight. How can you reward your employees and let them know that you appreciate and value their good work?
Most of the time, non-financial benefits are ignored for the obvious monetary rewards. But research shows that such rewards go a long way in creating a happy workforce. they are more effective in recognising good performance and more personal as compared to increments or bonuses.
Here are some tips to help you reward your employees in the current covid times.
- Take their inputs
The best way to motivate employees to offer their best in the worst of times is to make them feel they are part of a big family. Take them into confidence and apprise them of the situation the company is in. Let them offer inputs about what they think is the best form of recognition for them.
Everyone has a different motivator. Managers can work with their teams and devise the best form of non-financial benefits that would motivate their teams the most.
- Offer Challenging roles & Career advancement
The pandemic shifted the company goals and reset the priorities. This is the time to not just evaluate the employees’ recent work but appreciate their contribution to the company’s survival through these tough times. Every employee quickly moved and adopted the new remote working model and helped find solutions in this unprecedented business scenario.
Companies now need to appreciate this need for agility and swift adaptability as a very important quality in their workforce and recognise them by offering them career progressions or challenging roles.
Employees value the opportunity to learn and expand their skills in various newer and challenging roles. this can be a very important tool in motivating employees.
- Open Recognition
Create more avenues wherein you can openly recognise top performers. Use the company’s social media channels to create instant recognition programmes. Posting information about top performers on a platform where everyone can see them helps create a sense of pride for the top performer and motivates others to do better. It is a great form of non-financial incentive that also forms the backbone for a great culture.
- Instant Recognition
Apart from openly recognising top performance, it is not important to appreciate good work as and when it happens rather than waiting for the annual appraisal or assessment period. In fact, the millennials and Gen Z feel instant feedback or recognition is better as it provides them input on what they are doing and helps them make timely improvements.
In a survey on recognition and employee engagement by SHRM, 68 percent of HR professionals agreed that employee recognition has a positive impact on retention and 56 percent said such programs also help with recruitment.
- Training & Upskilling
Providing opportunities to upskill top performers works as a great motivating factor. Identifying consistent and top performers and offering them challenging roles, cross functional roles in different departments helps not only motivate them but also helps them in advancing in their careers. Similarly, prepare deserving employees for leadership roles by mentoring and coaching them and offering them relevant exposure.
Other than the above tips, you need to recognise your workforce as humans and provide them all the support and help that they need during these tough times. How you treat your workforce and teams in these times, will go a long way in retaining and attracting talent in the future.
Innovate and experiment. Create your own reward programmes based on what works with your employees by taking their inputs into consideration.
Contact us at csquad@flexiventures.com for expert HR consulting services.
