Motivating Employees

Never Stop Motivating For A Magnificent Year

Despite all the obstacles over the last few years, you can have a magnificent year. I’m no Pollyanna; the years have brought challenges, but each new year also brings a fresh opportunity to rethink how we recognize, motivate and reward employees in this wildly different workplace.

Strong, Out Of The Gate

Employee recognition is vital to success at every organization. Start now and make a strong statement. When workplaces went virtual, motivating employees changed. You can’t just rely on an occasional “good job” mention in an online meeting or relegate your recognition to annual performance reviews when motivating employees in the workplace.

Recognition coupled with rewards and incentives is a known motivator.

Now is the time to put a motivational plan in place for the entire year.

The Motivational Plan

Employees remember actions. It’s important that these actions be regular, visible (when appropriate), and memorable.

Setting specific goals to provide rewards to employees, coupled to concrete plans for each month of the year ensures that you keep motivating and rewarding employees. Remote working and long holiday breaks aggravate a feeling of isolation and disengagement among employees. Add in a general malaise and the belief that quitting is easy means you’ve got to work extra hard to inspire and motivate employees.

Put It On Paper

Divide the year into distinct periods – monthly, quarterly, etc. – and set aside some “surprise” periods. Then it’s a simple matter of choosing a goal and an incentive reward. It’s always a good idea to plan a mix between goals that are measured by clear objective metrics (by-the-numbers) as well as those that are decided on by the subjective evaluation of management or employees (i.e. best team player or most improved).

Mix it up!

Don’t forget to include everyone. Some employees won’t win goal-based or performance incentives but it’s important to also reward them occasionally. A good mix of incentives to offer employees includes incentive rewards for actions performed by the employee, rewards for being part of a larger organization or department, incentives that advance the quality of life and those that are just fun. Exceeding department or company goals is always a suitable time to reward all employees. Lifestyle and charitable incentives are also suitable for all.

Individual Performance goals
Company or Department Goals
Lifestyle – Work/Life Balance
Community
Fun

The Awards

Here are 10 simple examples of individual performance goals. Here’s where fun mixed with traditional business goals comes into play. Your situation will, of course, be unique:

Performance Award Example Goals

Metrics-based

Evaluation-based

The Rewards

Gift cards – chosen from a curated list of hundreds of well-known brands are an excellent way to reward and motivate employees. Whether it’s $50 for a pizza night to celebrate finishing a project, $100 for hitting an organizational goal, or a $200 bonus, e-gift cards are a fantastic way to recognize and delight employees.
Organizations can choose, send, and track digital gift cards, all in simple online recognition and reward systems.

Employee Choice / Theme Choice / Charitable Choice

One of the advantages of incentive systems like TruCentive is the ability to choose from over 1,000 brands, online merchants, and traditional card choices. This makes it easy for managers to set up programs quickly and curate the selection to a small number of choices (studies show that 6 or less is a good number of choices to offer) for each program.
It’s easy to create a theme for each award – movies, pizza, coffee, lunch, outdoors, fashion – you name it, from the enormous list of global choices.

Serendipity and Surprise

Surprise employees from time to time. Build six or eight one-time and special incentives into your program for unexpected employee rewards.
You can use these when a colleague excels on a project or in a customer engagement, or when employees want to recognize the exceptional efforts of a colleague. Rewards that quickly follow actions have an incredibly positive effect.

Also, consider surprise rewards when a significant event happens in the company – like hitting an overall sales or performance goal. This is a fantastic way to link employee actions into the overall goals of the company.

Don’t Burden Employees

So-called employee recognition systems – the ones that require employee input and constant engagement – may sound like a solution at first, but they quickly lose appeal and become another chore to perform. Employees recognizing fellow employees is important but asking them to engage with another software tool is a mistake. Recognition tied to tangible and valuable rewards from the organization are far more memorable that a pat on the back from fellow employees.

Get Started!

It’s easy to increase employee engagement using gift card incentive programs. You can get started today.

TruCentive makes it easy. Programs can be built in just a few minutes. TruCentive cuts cost because there simply is no waste from unclaimed cards.
Rewards are proven to build motivation and increase employees’ sense of belonging. Get started now and reap the rewards.

Ready to design something brilliant?

Schedule a free design session

Our design sessions are the perfect way to show you how TruCentive can help you realize your rewards, gifts, or payout goals in a real-world scenario, building a complete project with everything from your logo, design options, and messaging to incentive selection, deliveries, and reminders.

When we’re done, you’ll:

Possess a solid grasp of constructing your project.

Have a comprehensive understanding of best practices for incentive delivery.

Learn the secrets of the incentives industry and the savings and advantages of utilizing TruCentive for your next program.

If you’re ready to start designing on your own, sign up and start sending samples. There’s no credit card required to start exploring your creative side!

Create “Grade-A” content

Use powerful features to quickly create professional-looking incentive deliveries

At your service

With a TruCentive subscription, you get technical support for all your team members so you can get back to your project fast

Reimagine your productivity

Eliminate the time and frustration managing the procurement, delivery, and management of your rewards and incentives deliveries