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Employee incentive ideas to help your people and business thrive!

5 March 2023

Reward and recognition are crucial to your people strategy, creating happy and engaged employees. Employee incentives, when done right, are a powerful way to help your people and business reach their true potential. Read on to discover three employee incentive ideas that help your people and business thrive.

Your employee incentive and recognition strategy can make a significant impact, helping your people afford more of what really matters. When you reward with purpose and support with meaning, you build lasting connections with your employees, opening up a world of opportunities for your business.

 

Impactful employee incentives = engaged employees + business growth

 

Companies with an engaged workforce deliver 147% more earnings per share than their competitors (Gallup). 84% of HR leaders agree that embedding an employee reward and recognition strategy into your business boosts employee engagement, improves retention rates and helps attract talent. 

 

In fact, recognition programmes reduce voluntary employee turnover by 31% (Deloitte).

 

Individualise employee incentives to maximise results

Employee incentives are most effective when they meet your people’s unique needs and are inclusive of all areas within your business. 

 

When it comes to developing an inclusive employee incentive and reward strategy, it pays to start with your core values. Through them, you define your culture and the behaviours you want your people to model. Communication and consistency are essential to your strategy’s success, so keep the messages clear and concise.

 

Be inclusive with your employee incentives

The traditional sales incentives model isn’t suitable for all departments and working practices.

 

Numbers matter – there’s no denying that, and incentivising your sales team to meet their individual and group targets achieves results. Still, by adding your values into your strategy, you’re allowing every department and person in your business to shine.

 

Pluxee UK People Strategy Guide

 

Creating an impactful employee incentives strategy

KPIs can keep your business on target, but core values define who you are. Your identity matters to your people, partners, consumers, and future employees. Defining your core values and aligning your reward, recognition, and employee incentive strategies with them ensures you always keep sight of what you want your business to represent. 

 

Sustainability is vital when deciding the best mechanism for rewarding and incentivising your workforce. We recommend discovering what matters most to your people – they may surprise you! Financial employee incentives are impactful, but some may prefer experiences or time off, so be open and flexible to different incentive possibilities.

 

Compensation Incentives

Your employees will always appreciate extra money in their wage slips, and compensation incentives are a popular option for traditional sales and target-driven bonuses. Compensation incentives require more commitment between employer and employee, including profit-sharing schemes and stock options, so employers often link them to career progression.

 

For this reason, compensation incentives are an effective solution if your goal is to nurture long-term relationships and retain top talent. 

 

Recognition & Appreciation Incentives

Appreciation doesn’t need a big budget. A ‘thank you’ costs nothing, and if you’ve built recognition into your culture and behaviours, you’re already positively impacting the employee experience.

 

Don't underestimate the small things…

Creating a culture of appreciation starts with minor, everyday occurrences, such as praise during team meetings, one-to-ones, or a message of thanks for a job well done. Model the behaviour you want your team to adopt, and they’ll soon get on board, giving thanks to those who’ve offered support and praise to those who’ve gone above and beyond.

 

Credit where credit is due

If you’re a manager receiving a note of thanks from a customer or senior leader, be sure to let them know exactly who contributed to the task. Most importantly, ensure praise filters down to the rest of your team.

 

This will achieve two things:

  1. Make your team feel seen, heard, and valued.

  2. Build trust.

 

Embrace a digital solution

Digital recognition platforms take your strategy to the next level, allowing employees to share feedback or gratitude and even submit nominations. There's no need to ask permission or notify a manager or HR because a digital recognition platform will do all the admin for you.

 

We often expect a ‘thank you’ from a manager, but those words can be even more meaningful coming from a colleague. Embedding a digital recognition platform into your business and defining reward-worthy behaviours enables colleagues to acknowledge and appreciate those fuelling your business.

 

Peer-to-peer recognition is an effective way to harness the power of collaboration, boosting engagement, morale, and motivation.

 

Celebrate together!

Social connection and joint celebration are impactful ways to make life at work more joyful. Whether you host an annual, company-wide event or team away day, the promise of a group activity or party is an impactful incentive tool, especially in a digital world where there’s less opportunity for colleagues to be physically together. 

 

Reward Incentives

Underpinning your reward incentives are the behaviours and achievements you want to recognise. To be inclusive, we recommend mixing targets and KPIs with your core values and peer-to-peer recognition. 

 

This way, you can effectively reward and incentivise across all departments, from sales and marketing to customer service and finance. After all, they all have a valuable part to play in making your business a success.

 

Reward with impact and inclusivity!

Our eVouchers are a sustainable, versatile, eco-friendly digital solution for your reward, recognition, and incentivisation strategy. Choose from over 100 retailers and empower your people to decide where and how they want to spend their rewards.

 

Our Pluxee Card works as hard as your people, creating opportunities for you to link your reward and employee benefits strategies into one mode of delivery. An impactful way to support and incentivise, giving employees the chance to earn up to 15% cashback at one of our over 80 participating whenever they spend in-store or online.

 

Harness the power of employee incentives with Pluxee UK

The importance of a recognition and incentives strategy is clear.

 

We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, so it’s time to think beyond the initial gift and use your reward and incentives scheme to help stretch your employees’ salaries further. When you reward with purpose and support with meaning, you can build lasting connections with your employees.

 

Arrange a call to discover how Pluxee UK can help you build a sustainable and impactful employee incentive and reward strategy. Together, let’s open up a world of opportunities for your people to enjoy more of what really matters in their lives.

 

 

 

Sources:

Gallup

Deloitte