1001 Ways to Reward Employees

1001 Ways to Reward Employees
Thinking Past the Raise and the Promotion

By Candice J. Wanner

Do you ever get the feeling your employees’ motivational centers have been burned out in some horrendous group childhood accident? Is company morale so low it’d have to trudge up a flight of steps to hit rock bottom? Well, I’ve good news for you (as I usually do) it doesn’t have to be that way. According to the book, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson, “No employee seeks to be mediocre; all seek to be magnificent.” The trick is to move motivation-less members from mediocrity to magnificence through the means of motivational mannerisms. (Is there a Guinness World Record for using the most words beginning with ‘m’ in one sentence? Somebody get back to me on that.) The point, and I do have one, is that if you want to make people work to their absolute best all the time, you have to satisfy their cravings for recognition. As Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics so aptly put it, “There are two things people want more than sex and money...recognition and praise.”

Dr. Gerald H. Graham, a professor of management at Wichita State University, recently did a study of more than 1,500 employees from all sorts of businesses across the country. He found that the most important single motivator listed by those 1,500 employees was personalized, immediate recognition by their managers. However, those 1,500 employees also reported that manager-initiated recognition was the least common form of motivation used by American companies today. In fact, only forty-two percent said that their managers were actually using some form of what they say is their number one motivator. What’s wrong with this picture? As Alan Melick, Circulation and Marketing Administrator for Playboy Enterprises states, “When management shows through actions rather than words that you’re a valuable employee, that your input is valued no matter what level you work at, it’s very motivating.” So, why aren’t more companies giving their employees positive reinforcement?

The answer, I think lies in the changing face of business. Today’s job market requires specialized skills, flexibility, ingenuity and the adaptability to change with the current trends. Employees today are moving towards a more ‘free agent’ mentality where they’re looking for the best deal for themselves and company loyalty is a thing of the past. So what can you do to attract all those free agents out there and turn them into dedicated, goal-oriented, loyal team players? Well, according to Robert Crandall, CEO of American Airlines, “there’s nothing more important than making certain that each employee feels respected and valued.”

Now, you may be saying that it would take too much of a manager’s time to personally run around and pat everybody on the back that is doing a good job, but really, what are manager positions created to do? Manage, of course. And, managing your employees’ morale and job satisfaction is all part of the job description, like it or not. If you want to think about it in a purely monetary fashion, according to the “People, Performance and Pay” study by the American Productivity Center in Houston and the American Compensation Association, “it generally takes 5 to 8 percent of an employee’s salary to change behavior if the reward is cash and approximately 4 percent of the employee’s salary if the reward is non-cash.” So, in the long run, it’s cheaper to run around patting backs than it is sitting down writing checks.

So, okay, how do I go about motivating my employees you ask? Well, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson is a veritable jewel mine (I like jewels better than gold) of information dealing with easy, innovative and fun ways to reward, encourage and motivate your employees. (And, yes, I said the dreaded three letter “fun” word. I realize it was probably stricken from your company’s vocabulary records eons ago, but it’s time to paste it back in there.) The awards fall into three different categories:

1. Informal Rewards:
Such as Hewlett Packard’s Golden Banana Reward which came about according to 1001 because one day a Hewlett-Packard Company engineer burst into his manager’s office in Palo Alto, CA, to announce he’d just found the solution to a problem the group had been struggling with for many weeks. His manager quickly groped around his desk for some item to acknowledge the accomplishment and ended up handing the employee a banana from his lunch with the words, ‘Well done. Congratulations!’ The employee was initially puzzled, but over time the Golden Banana Award became one of the most prestigious honors bestowed on an inventive employee. Now, the moral of that little story is that rewards do not…I repeat DO NOT have to be costly plaques and gold watches. Hand-written notes and day-old bananas can work just as well as long as there’s sincerity behind the award.

2. Awards for Specific Achievements and Activities:
These include such things as Outstanding Employee Awards, Quality Awards, Safety Awards, Customer Service Awards and awards for money-saving ideas.

3. Formal Awards:
According to 1001, these awards are statistically not as motivational as informal rewards, but they are just as important because they can be used to award employees for a span of time or for a significant accomplishment. Many local companies in the Harrisburg area such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot have Employee of the Month awards. The winner may get a special parking space or their picture may be placed in a prominent place in the store.

1001 Ways to Reward Employees confers most of its information and ideas through examples of companies that currently reward their employees in fun and unique ways. It also stresses the value of making your workplace a fun environment. (Eek...I said it again!) For, “if you want to thrive and remain competitive in a world that is changing radically and relentlessly, you need the fluidity and flexibility of humor”, according to C.W. Metcalf, President of C.W. Metcalf & Company. (My favorite fun suggestion in 1001 was to put plastic fish in the water cooler.)

The stories 1001 uses are interesting and the quotes of famous trendsetters such as American Airlines, Gilette Company and Ford are pithy and right on the mark. 1001 is witty, fun and really is a truly valuable tool for managers everywhere.

So, the next time your staff is wandering around like the living dead, pull out 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, turn to the chapter on having fun and see if you can’t put some life back into those flesh-eating zombies. I think you’ll be surprised…nay, shocked!...at how positively energized you can make your employees. You’ll have your own flock…herd...covey...whatever...of little Energizer bunnies in next to no time. Then, you can sit back and reap YOUR reward of increased productivity and higher profits. Who knows, maybe someone will slip you a banana with the words “Good job” on it for your fantastic motivational skills! Stranger things have happened.