Organizations need to implement effective employee recognition and rewards programs to keep their employees engaged and motivated. Given their importance, organizations need to focus on the crucial aspects for the success of employee rewards programs.
One such factor is the choice of rewards for the program.
The common mistake that organizations make is to rely on popular options and what has worked well in the past.
It is standard for organizations to choose popular items such as iPods, gift cards of top brands, high-end watches, or company-branded merchandise as employee rewards.
Sadly, this may not work if organizations give all employees the same kind of rewards.
This ‘all-size-fits-all’ strategy; may backfire as employees might feel disinclined to receive the same reward that their coworkers might have received previously.
This might make the rewards seem more formal than a sincere attempt to recognize employees’ hard work and dedication.
After all, not everyone might be keen to get the same kind of item as a reward.
Most importantly, it does not consider the employees’ individual preferences.
It can make them feel that their employers are either unaware or not interested in knowing about their preferences.
Hence, simply using popular reward items or what has worked in the past may make the program ineffective.
This can even leave the employees feeling disappointed with the overall program.
It might lower their motivation levels contrary to the objectives of such employee reward programs.
To make their rewards program genuinely effective, organizations need to enable employees to choose their rewards.
Those organizations that have already implemented this strategy are getting great results from their programs.
They can set a budget for each award and provide a reasonable number of meaningful options for that budget range.
An employee rewards portal with a catalog of items of different values is the easiest way to implement this strategy.
These options could be various physical items such as electronics, lifestyle products, or experiences.
The rewards portal should be backed by proper logistics processes to deliver the items to the employees.
A simpler option is to have a catalog of gift vouchers of different brands and denominations in the employee rewards portal.
So, individual employees can choose the items or brands of vouchers based on their personal preferences, giving them complete freedom of choice.
Organizations need to constantly seek new and better ways to keep their employee reward programs exciting and interesting.
Hence, the strategy of allowing employees to decide on the reward item they receive is an effective way of ensuring this.
Such a strategy benefits the organizations in many ways, as discussed below:
Granting the employees the freedom to choose their reward gives them a sense of empowerment.
They are likely to feel extra motivated to be considered worthy of the reward and to receive the reward of their choice.
As employees get a chance to choose the reward based on their preferences, their sense of individuality gets a boost.
They feel more secure about being different from their co-workers, and this feeling helps promote diversity in the workforce.
So, employees can feel comfortable and confident about their different backgrounds, beliefs, and preferences as members of the same workforce.
Being able to choose their rewards based on their personal preferences, creates additional interest among the employees.
Hence, this increases their level of engagement, striving to perform better and working towards getting the desired reward.
The organizational culture improves significantly with employees being more engaged and happy with the rewards policy.
This impacts the employee goodwill and employer brand value of the organization positively. It also enhances employee retention.
Organizations need to think beyond the standard and popular rewards options to ensure employee rewards programs’ success. Freedom of choice is critical for deriving the desired results from such programs.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurship experience. In the past, Sagar has worked in leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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