How to Incentivise Your Employees

Employee motivation seems to be at an all-time low, with more than a third of all employees actively or casually searching for employment outside of their current position. With 55% of employees more likely to leave their jobs over the next 12 months and nearly half of the world’s workforce claiming they have left a job because it didn’t match their expectations, offering incentives to your current staff can seem like the only option.

However, while pay raises and promotions are the most common form, there are countless different incentives to consider for your employees, that don’t have to cost your business a lot. Here are five to get you started:

Just Say Thank You

Looking for a cost-free incentive for your employees? Simply start saying thank you. Too often, employers fall into the attitude that the daily routine is nothing exceptional, but your employees come into work each and every day to keep your company running.

With a simple ‘Thank You’ holding the potential to increase productivity by 50%, you’ll not only be improving attitudes and motivation within your employees, but you can improve upon your own business efficiency and profitability.

Introduce Bonuses

We should not be surprised that this aspect has such an impact. Bonuses are everywhere, even close to home, with financial institutions and trading entities giving incentives like cashback and standard bonuses. When we shop online, we get free gifts to reward loyalty.

Bonuses are a near foolproof way of incentivising your employees. Just like they encourage customers to shop or invest, a bonus can encourage your employees to work harder and with higher motivation.

Whether you introduce a holiday-based bonus scheme that inspires your staff to work hard over the year to earn a bit extra at Christmas, or you introduce smaller, monthly bonuses for employees that have gone above and beyond expectation, monetary incentives are often the most effective if your business can afford it.

Consider Flexible Working Hours

Everyone has a life outside of their job, even those of us dedicated to our careers. From doctors appointments and meetings at our children’s schools to an impromptu holiday or even just a day off for mental recuperation, we all need a bit of time off and having a rigid holiday scheme often isn’t enough.

With 80% of employees claiming that they would choose a job with flexible hours over one without, introducing flexibility, whether through remote working or the basic changeable hours, can be all you need to attract and incentivise the talent in your company.

Get Creative with Holiday Allowance

If flexibility of the day to day business isn’t a possibility for your business, why not consider introducing unlimited paid holiday allowance? While this obviously comes with its risks, taking away the pressure of a set number of days and giving them the freedom to implement their own work-life balance as they see fit.

Of course, there is the risk of some employees taking ‘too many’ days, and others taking too few, but this is an issue that you can work out with your employees as the programme goes on.

Office Celebrations

While celebrating individual employees is a great way to show appreciation, it holds the potential to demotivate those that haven’t been celebrated. To counter this, you can introduce office-wide or even team-focused celebrations as a form of incentive.

Take them out for lunch one day or introduce a workplace party to celebrate the company’s achievements. Stock the fridge with snacks and drinks or even just make it a point to celebrate your employees birthdays – introducing social events into the workplace helps your employees to unwind, socialise and strengthen the overall team dynamic.

Whether your employees need some serious motivation to improve staff retention, or they just need a bit of a push to improve productivity across the board, introducing incentives into the workplace can be an effective way of getting things back on track.

From standard bonuses and rewards to a simple thank you or even flexible working hours as standard, keeping efficiency and productivity at its optimum level may not be as difficult or impossible as initially seems.