Does anyone out there have any good ideas of the types of things that could be used as reward and incentive schemes in the workplace?
I'm looking for any ideas that you may have come across in your own workplaces where the company did something good for you or introduced a really great benefit or program that made you feel appreciated.
Anything at all...out of the box ideas too if you want speculate. Looking for real world experience and brainstorming ideas.
My wife worked for a company that was always dreaming up crap like this (no offense intended), and all they ever came up with was useless garbage like company-logo jackets (nothing says "yeah I'm a wage slave!" like wearing a company jacket off-duty!) and "cookie bouquets" and suchlike.
You want incentive? Here's incentive. Think for three seconds about what employees would really like. What do you think it would be?
How about:
1. More money
2. More time off
3. Some insanely valuable thing like a new car
THAT'S what motivates the people who work for you to work for you!! Make the "prize" one of those three things and people will work like CRAZY to win.
Anything else is just 15 minutes of bragging rights, then it's back to the grind.
Another thing that I think works well is actual inspiration. By this I mean making the employees feel like they are contributing to something greater than themselves rather than the CEO's new yacht fund.
Think for a second about what it must be like to be a member of Apple's iPhone development team, for example: in many ways, that's a job most of us WOULD NOT WANT. It's got INCREDIBLE pressure, INSANE deadlines, the boss is NEVER happy, any slip-ups will affect MILLIONS who will HATE YOU. Long hours? Hard work? You betcha.
Oh, but the rewards! I'm not talking about the money, I mean the feeling that you are literally changing the world, reinventing an industry, making history.
Let's just say I don't think the "turnover" on the iPhone team is very high.
So, either you find a way to make employees feel like they are part of the team, equal in stature to the suits and key to the success of the company, or (if you can't do that), then you offer them the things they really want out of their job: more money, more personal time, or something of incredibly high value.
I'm with chas_m on this one. Cheesy is as cheesy does, and nothing says 'cheesy' like phoney baloney employee appreciation scams.
Best employee appreciation is decent working conditions, decent treatment from the overlords and a decent salary. Employee appreciation schemes tend to be in lieu of those things.
Employee appreciation certificate "frame":
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Back in the late 1960s when we were a young and fledgling company, we agonized over how we might motivate our employees. We had grown to three newspapers in the previous five years and had 60 employees in two provinces.
We finally decided that two things might help tie them all together.
First we launched an employee monthly four page tab and invited each branch to compose a page in the publication outlining their activities. We encouraged those submissions to be “about them”, not about the business.
We would use the front page to outline company news and goals to employees.
The response was almost immediate and we began to get lively participation. The employees at each branch wanted their counterparts thousand of miles away to know all about them, and we wound up with pictures of weddings, births, charity work done by employees, redecorating of their work place and a myriad of news I never would have imagined interested them.
One branch even started a NHL hockey pool and ran it successfully for years after.
Shortly thereafter, we decided to offer our employees “a piece of the pie” and we instituted a profit sharing plan. It was a simple plan indeed, but it was welcomed by all employees.
All we did was to set our budget for the coming fiscal year collectively as a branch by branch total. We pledged to put aside 2% of profits into a special fund.
The plan did not “kick in” until we achieved 95% of budgeted profit. Then each month in the employee publication, we published the branch by branch results as a percentage of budget achieved to date and did so every month through year end.
We also encouraged employees to send in ideas to management to either cut costs, or increase revenue and published those ideas alongside the profit report each month. The ideas began to flow and it became a spirited competition between the three branches to outdo the other with better and bigger ideas. (As a thought, this could be done between departments of a single business.)
To administer the plan we decided to start by giving each current employee 20 points and new employees the same at the end of their three months probation. We then gave each employee 5 points for each year of service and five points for every thousand dollars of salary earned. The salary earned portion was important as it gave employees with more responsibility a larger share. IE: A manager on salary earned more than an employee in their department on an hourly rate and the points per $1,000 earned reflected that responsibility. Each year thereafter their points grew by 5 for another years service and also by dollars earned.
The very first year we achieved 107% of budgeted profits and the pot grew to a sizable sum. Once the year end books were complete, we paid out profits sharing to each and every employee employed by us at the time. (If you quit, there was no sharing paid.)
To determine who got how much, we simply totalled those points we gave each employee and divided the number of points into the pool of cash in the profit sharing account. That gave us a point dollar value, and we then multiplied that value by the number of points the employee had earned.
The plan and the employee publication ran for over 20 years and grew to 18 newspapers, but when we sold to a major corporation, they discontinued it and things slowly went to hell in a hand basket. There were two tough years in a total of 20 years that we did not achieve our goals and thus paid no profit sharing. (We also included the profit sharing as an expense in our annual budgets and increased budgeted revenue to cover it. )
I apologize for the length of this, but I hope that it gives you some food for thought.
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Gee, wow, making employees feel that their contributions, opinions and ideas are actually valued, (really listening to them) rather than paying them lip service, ie asking "what do you think" and then doing whatever the heck you feel like....what a great idea, rather than some feel-good corporate crap...
nice job, SINC
that's what I didn't like about my last job-the hypocracy and bs was soo thick you could cut it with a knife. They had this "you're welcome" awards thing for the service industry...invite a whole bunch of folks, have 'em line up for some little snacks and stuff, give 'em one glass of very dry champage, then pack 'em into an auditorium where they had to sit and listen to two local dj's (or media personalities) flap their gums for two hours, then maybe get an award which was worth the paper it was printed on. I was not impressed..they asked me what I thought about the awards and I told 'em, and I suggested giving someone money, or a video game system, ie a ps 2, xbox, or psp, shoot even a game boy advance with one game, y'know, someone of value, and they didn't take me seriously (no surprises). Heck even my old boss who has a timeshare in La-La Land told me "that was a complete load of crap". An amazing bit of wisdom-surprising for someone who kept asking the staff "What are you gonna on the weekend"-every time, and who organized monthly potlucks, even a staff tea (with cucumber sandwiches, lace tablecloths and bone china cups-the whole bit)
and who said "We're one big happy family" and "I'm just like you, John"
well, what can you say, except-get out the hip waders and the extra big scoop shovel, there's a load of corporate you-know what coming down the pipeline
Tangible reward in proportion to productivity and company involvement.
Beats the snot out of those crappy, demeaning "employee of the week" certs that you see on the walls at a lot of places.
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HOWEVER: occassionally I have in the past provided links to instructions or illustrations. I will not do so in future, in fact I will not be offering helpful advice for free just to have my words pirated until the sleazy ad linking desists. I will, however, answer PMs.
I remember having an employee incentive plan based on profits--and the execs pissed all the profits away on insane projects that every employee knew were going to be disasters. Sorry employee people--no cheque for you!!
The worst incentive program I have ever seen, rearranging summer work scheduleds to provide employees with Friday afternoons off--it essentially amounted to a gift of time of about 15 minutes per week--then declaring one summer that the performance of the company sucked and the employees probbly didn't deserve it this year.
__________________
"My life is my own."
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If the key is getting a job done, then flexibility in hours can be a big morale boost. For example: Not having to commute during peak traffic. If it can be done at home do it there. Got moms working for you, think about some sort of onsite daycare if they can't work from home. Personally I loved the job where I was able to work 3-12 hour days one week and 4 the next. Gave me a lot more time to do the things I loved.
Bottom line a really good employer can find ways to make the system fit the employees needs as well as his own. The crappy employer tries to make everyone fit his system.
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