You’ll have more positive nuances to draw on if you’re part of the company you’re tasked with organising some kind of rewards system or event for its employees. Either way, here are four great ideas around rewarding your staff:
…if you can involve the staff members to be rewarded in the planning process, all the better…
Company Retreat or Field Trip
If you have the means for it, an entire weekend away would do all your staff members in attendance a world of good. The key, however, would be to only give them the freedom of the venue selected once they’ve taken part in some kind of team-building exercise, even if it’s merely eating dinner together, enjoying a party atmosphere, etc. It doesn’t necessarily have to assume the structure of something like those corporate team-building courses, e.g. obstacle courses or masterminds…
The next best thing is a field-trip, if you neither have the collective time nor the resources to take everybody away on what can definitely be an expensive retreat. Field-trips give staff members a chance to interact with each other and form bonds outside of the working environment, but this will inevitably benefit the interrelationships between those co-workers in the workplace.
Hiring a Dodgems Ride Fleet
Bring the party to the workplace and momentarily transform your workforce’s everyday working environment into one which has tonnes of fun on offer. It’s important that the regular workplace makes for the venue as this sends the subconscious message that where they come to earn their living is in fact a place which is full of infinite possibilities. A bumper cars hire service is a great place to start in constructing what most closely resembles a temporary, mini-fairground.
Complementary entertainment which encourages group involvement should include that which you’d find at weddings and other such events, like a photo booth, a carousel, Ferris wheel, etc.
A Surprise Day-Off
This would naturally have to be planned some way in advance, because this would allow you to build the tension up by perhaps applying some pressure with regards to looming deadlines, and then surprising your employees with a day-off. Imagine the happiness they would feel upon hearing the news after opening their Annual leave planner for staff and seeing an added paid leave against their name. For a working professional, there are very few things, if any, better than suddenly learning that you don’t have to work on a day which you’d set aside as just another soul-crushing day at the office.
Value Exchange Event
Disguise the question into some “employee satisfaction” survey if you have to, but you’d have to find a way to extract a wish, desire or need each of your employees you want to reward has. Proceed to draw on your network of other businesses and perhaps clients or even suppliers you have good relations with and simply get them to sponsor the delivery of each employee’s wish, desire, or need.
It’s much easier than you think, for instance if one employee doesn’t have enough money to pay for a wedding venue, get one of your clients who might perhaps own one to sponsor its use for that employee. The trade-off is exposure (free marketing), of course…
The key to rewarding your staff however should always come back down to some kind of experience which will cast you in the light of an employer who cares beyond the formal workplace environment.