Are staff rewards the key to retaining people?

A staff rewards program isn’t going to magically solve any issues your teams may have. Rewards (like pay rises, bonuses and treats) are a short term solution and quickly forgotten if your staff are not happy in their job. No matter how many free lunches you give them, if your team is not motivated and engaged you will not get the results you want and ultimately you may find your best people are moving on to pastures new.

So what is the answer? Well, as always, it’s complicated – you need to look at rewards from a much broader perspective.

Firstly, do you know what makes everyone in your team tick? If you do, then you can shape a ‘rewards program’ for each individual, that is tailored to their top motivators.

For example, the Star profile is motivated by recognition, they could be encouraged by a reward, but only if everyone knew about it! However the Friend profile is more motivated by working in collaboration with a group. Financial or other rewards will have very little effect on this type of person, but working with a good team with shared values and goals is likely to keep them happy.

When you extrapolate the above examples across 9 motivators, many of which have potential to interact with each other, it is easy to see how building a tailored reward program for each team member can be quite a daunting task. But with the right assessment in place, simple and straight forward action plans can be put in place to address these complexities.

Of course, some people ARE motivated by financial rewards (the Builder profile particularly), so it is worth considering a staff rewards program. In recent years these have developed with technology so that now you can subscribe and run your entire program via an online portal. They do offer some useful benefits :-

1. You can often select the type of benefits your team receives
This is great because any reward really does need to be tailored to the individual, some people might like a free gym membership and others would prefer donuts!

2. The automated systems ensure rewards are delivered in a timely fashion
One of the most difficult aspects of a staff reward program is ensuring that milestones are checked and rewards delivered, so that staff don’t feel like they are being forgotten, so the automated programs are great for making sure rewards are given on time

My clients commission me to carry out Team Motivation Reviews for a wide variety of reasons. Some clients want to improve sales or results, others want to know which team members they should be developing or ensure they retain their best team members. Whatever the reason for the initial enquiry, rewarding staff is often a question that comes up at some point. If you ignore the issue, or rely on financially based rewards systems, then you may find your team shrinking quickly!