Offering good wages is a great way to improve morale and attract talented workers. But most successful companies know a competitive salary is only half the equation. That’s why they offer a comprehensive range of additional benefits and inducements to help recruit and keep the best talent in the market.
Whether it’s financial incentives like commissions and performance-related bonuses or lifestyle enhancing perks like computer loans or free gym membership, they know these extras make staff feel rewarded and valued, helping to create a contented and committed workforce.
Let’s start by examining the business case for rewards. Naturally, you want staff to feel appreciated, but you might be a little sceptical, believing that perks and other inducements are nothing more than gifts and gimmicks. You could be forgiven for asking: isn’t it all just an unnecessary luxury – a huge drain on time and money for the business? Don’t staff rewards just create a large amount of admin with little or no tangible results for the bottom line?
The answer, happily, is no. It isn’t a waste of time. Rewards reap results. They swell profits.
But before you dash off and start a reward scheme for your staff, here are a few points to consider:
- It must be fair and transparent, treating everyone equally and not discriminating against any section of your workforce. For example, offering a crate of wine or a magnum of champagne will be useless to Muslim employees.
- It must be logical, easy to understand and well explained.
- It must be well publicised so that all staff are aware of it.
- It must offer rewards that staff actually want – which have relevance to them.
- It must have credibility and stability. It can’t chop and change every few months.
- It must offer rewards that have real value and worth.
- Rewards must be achievable – targets mustn’t be set so high that no one can hit them.
- Bonus targets must be achievable over a reasonable period of time – no one is interested in rewards that seem to take forever to earn.
And a final but very important thing to bear in mind: there’s no point offering perks that cost you more to provide than they are worth. Make sure you put in place some means of measuring how much benefit the company gets from the money and time spent on a rewards system. You should be able to see some increase in productivity or sales in return for your investment.
Author: Diana Nadin
