Small business owners have a disadvantage to the giant corporations when it comes to rewarding and providing employee incentives. With a much smaller budget, small business owners are at risk of losing good employees if they do not feel recognized for the work they perform.
However, there are many great ways you can reward employees without a giant human resources or compensation budget. Here is a two-part look at a few strategies and ideas:
PART 1: DETERMINING INCENTIVES
Find out what employees want
You may be surprised to find out that employees typically want rewards and recognition that are well within a limited budget. However, the trick is not to guess what they want.
Ask them!
Design a quick online survey through a site such as SurveyMonkey.com. Be sure to ask inquiring questions with specific options, as well as places where survey-takers can type their own ideas. Anonymous surveys can be a great resource for gathering affordable incentive ideas to use with your employees.
Make it specific to an employee
Tell your managers and supervisors to learn information about their teammates. What may be an incentive for one employee may not work for another. Find out what makes them tick, such as coffee shop gift cards, casual days, or even free parking once in a while. That way, you have a great list of incentives that each employee can work toward.
Make incentives competitive
You don’t need to reward all employees with a company bonus every year. Instead, why not make incentives competitive? This gives extra motivation for employees to achieve that coveted prize, such as free parking for a month, movie ticket gift cards, or even cash.
Star Performers
Another way to motivate employees to gain an incentive award is by nomination. Have your managers choose one employee each month to receive the award. The reward could be a rotating trophy to display in their cubicle, cash award, gift certificates, etc. A variation on this theme is to have peers nominate each other for the award each month.
Part 1 gives you some options on determining how to give employee incentives on a budget. Read Part 2 [INCLUDE LINK TO EMPLOYEE INCENTIVES PART 2 HERE] to find some great ideas on specific types of rewards and incentives.
