By Tim M Lee
Money alone is not enough to motivate employees. It is more of a 'cold' reward for working and does not connect well at an emotional level. To encourage people to really exert discretionary effort you need to engage them in their roles. Employee engagement levels have been consistently linked to improved performance and profitability. Non cash incentives such as vouchers, social events, trophies, plaques and awards are all excellent ways to boost engagement levels amongst your team. The goal is to turn your employees into team members, striving to win that championship trophy.
So how do you go about implementing a non cash incentive program? There are two key elements to this. Firstly what behaviours are you looking to enforce, and what rewards you are going to give to reward those behaviours.
The most important element of employee engagement is showing discretionary effort in one's role. This is going above and beyond what is expected of them and really giving their best. The opposite is a disengaged employee, who shows up everyday to do the bare minimum or just enough to not get fired. The advantages of high engagement are obvious, as are the downfalls of disengaged employees.
Reinforcing engagement behaviour can be difficult especially if the behaviour can not be easily measured. High engagement leading to increased sales figures is easy to recognise and reward. Excellent customer service or teamwork are more difficult. For these more difficult measures, trophies and awards make great solutions. Customer service and teamwork are both very emotional behaviours and rewarding these with cash incentives is not ideal. Trophies, plaques and awards can fill this emotional gap as they provide emotional reward through praise and recognition from others. As social beings this is a very strong reward and more fitting than financial incentives.
Trophies, awards and plaques are also effective in the workplace for the same reason that they are so coveted in the sporting arena. Sports teams show extremely high levels of engagement. Even at the local club level where players are not paid, individuals show up to training religiously and give their all at every game. Even at the top professional level players are happier to win a trophy than their multi-million dollar salary. The trophy for them is the ultimate achievement that drives them to work hard. Translating this kind of engagement into the workplace can produce outstanding results. Through creating a sense of belonging to a team you can instill this sense of team pride in your workforce.
By presenting a monthly trophy, award or plaque you can instill this sense of striving and teamwork in your employees. It will incent them to go above and beyond to 'win' the trophy' as well as instilling a strong teamwork ethic if you are presenting both team and individual awards. These programmes when run in conjunction with cash incentives are powerful tools in increasing engagement, productivity and profit.
Xpress Awards NZ are specialists in corporate trophies. Visit Tim M Lee's Google Plus page
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