Employers are always looking for new, cost effective, ways to reward their employees. Here are the worst and the best.
If you have ever worked for a large company then you're probably familiar with the interesting and sometimes silly ways that management comes up with to reward their employees. Although their intentions are good, most of the time the rewards aren't actually appreciated by their employees.
You'd think that by now, most companies would have figured out what employees consider rewarding. After all, most of the management were once non-managerial employees themselves. However, it seems that any lessons they learned went straight out of their head as part of a management brain-washing procedure, or something like it.
Here are the worst ways to reward employees:
- Pens with your logo on it – These pens with the company logo and phone number are great to give to clients, but they don't make employees feel rewarded. In fact, most of the time they are used at an office desk by an employee who is already familiar with the logo and knows the phone number by heart. They just want a pen that writes, and the logo doesn't even matter. If it makes the company happy to have all of the employees using pens with their names on it, then fine, just don't consider that a job perk.
- Coffee mugs with the company logo – Coffee cups, that's what everyone needs. I always wonder how the conversation that ended with deciding on coffee mugs went down. I just can't imagine a group of upper management carefully considering the options and coming up with coffee mugs as the best possible reward. Don't get me wrong, I love coffee mugs. In fact, I have several in my cabinets. Almost all of them have some sort of logo or advertisement on them, but I prefer to select my own coffee cups.
- Gift Certificates – I don't mind getting a gift certificate to places I actually shop, but most of the time when a company hands out gift cards, it is because they got a great deal on them from a struggling business. This means that they are typically from a store that no one really shops at. I don't know about you, but a $50 gift card for a store I don't like doesn't make me feel rewarded. In fact, odds are good that I will end up never using it.
- Mandatory dinners and parties – It's sort of funny that to reward employees for going above and beyond and working themselves to the bone to land an account or accomplish a goal, the reward is to force them to give up more of their free time to hang out with the people from work. Perhaps some people who don't have a life outside of work might enjoy this, most people have family responsibilities and other things that make going out to a celebratory dinner more of a headache than anything else.
Here are some of the best ways to reward employees:
- Praise – We all love it. The only thing better than receiving verbal praise from your employer is receiving it in writing. Written praise is highly coveted because you can keep a copy for your own personal records and use it to negotiate a raise later on or even use it when looking for a new job. Sincere praise is the best reward and it's free.
- Money – Everyone loves money, and getting a bonus is the ultimate reward. I know, you may ask, “What about gift cards, that's sort of like money?” Yeah, no, no it's not at all the same thing. Raises and bonuses make employees happy and keeps them from leaving for greener pastures.
- Vacation time – Time off is always a great reward. Especially when you are being rewarded for working harder and putting in longer hours, a day off can be an excellent reward. Not only does it acknowledge the hard work, it also recognizes that employees have a life outside of work.
What does your company do to reward employees? What is the best or worst reward you have ever received? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for ManufacturingWorkersBlog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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