Rewarding Your Employees Could be a Path to Retention

Virtually every organization has a problem with employee retention. As Willis Towers Research findings show, more than 25% of employees today are at a high risk for turnover. What is more, many of those employees are top performers in their companies, or at least have the potential to become ones. The costs of recruiting new employees aside, the presence of these people certainly will not be easy to replace. This means that companies have to try to avoid losing them at all costs.

Business owners have to realize that employee turnover not only costs a lot, it can also easily disrupt the flow of an already effective workforce. And while most business managers tend to think that money plays a vital role in employee engagement, as well as retention, research suggest otherwise. According to AON’s Trends in Global Employee Engagement report, top three engagement drivers among the workforce are career opportunities, organization reputation, and recognition.

What Should You Reward?

In order to create a proper rewarding system, you have to recognize what activities you should reward. In most cases, recognition programs focus on tenure. In fact, almost 90% of these programs center only around tenure, according to B&A research. However, a winning system recognizes two types of employee activity – behaviour and performance. The latter is easiest to address, simply because of the direct link between the goals you set for your worker and the outcomes that that can be measured. For instance, you could easily award top people in the sales department for achieving periodic goals.

On the other hand, rewarding certain employee behaviours is much more difficult. In order to figure that out, you have to determine what the specific behaviours you want to reward are. Maybe you should compensate employees that come in as early as possible and stay late. Conversely, you could reward someone for their ideas on how to complete their work more effectively and efficiently. Basically, you need to figure out whether you want to reward someone for innovation or the time they are putting in.

Rewards Based on Personality

When it comes to rewarding your workers, it is vital to understand that not everyone is going to appreciate the same things. But when you reward your employees based on their personality, you show them that you are willing to take the time to learn what motivates them to reach their full potential. But make sure to find out what they want before you start rewarding them and praising them publically. Because the fact is, some people can actually be embarrassed and even demotivated by being publicly recognized and singled out.

As we mentioned before, you do not even need a lot of money to reward your workforce. According to the book The 1001 Rewards & Recognition Fieldbook, roughly 58% of employees only need a simple “Thank you” from their manager to feel rewarded and satisfied. And if you ignore this fact, you will definitely miss out on a huge opportunity to reward your employees, without spending almost any money. For instance, considering that we are now in the middle of a holiday season. For that reason, it might be wise to hand out a few notes and delight your workers with some gift cards for Christmas.

Increasing Productivity

You have to face the fact that recognition drives productivity. According to the statistics gathered by Socialcast, almost 70% of people would work even harder if they felt their effort is better appreciated by their superiors. Just think about – even in grade school, teachers reward good students with a golden start for their hard work. In turn, this pushes students to work even harder in order to gain more appreciation and recognition. And who says this does not work for adults?

People simply want to be recognized and rewarded for their contributions and achievements. They want their work to make a difference and have meaning. If you are slacking on employee recognition, it is the same as ignoring their existence completely. Last but not the least, always keep in mind that if your workforce feels appreciated, your organization will surely see a boost in productivity, an increase in job satisfaction, and ultimately, higher employee retention.