Creative Employee Rewards

Employee Recognition and Reward is the simplest way to improve employee engagement. We have met with many leaders that still struggle to find an efficient way to reward employees.

Recognition and Reward is a challenge but what we have learned well here at Redii, is that if you align the recognition with the team’s or company values the reward you send to your employees has more than a monetary value. You make them feel that their contribution is impactful and they are moving the game forward.

The secret sauce to employee rewards are the organic ingredients: it has to be frequent, and it has to be creative. And don’t forget that one in three people leave an organisation because they feel that they are simply not recognised.

That’s why we have prepared this list of creative employee reward ideas that will help you to nail how to reward a valued employee or team for a well-done job.

1. Company Rewards.

Company Rewards are great as they create engagement immediately. Having a fantastic corporate image gives you the opportunity to produce company swag such as limited edition t-shirts, mugs, umbrellas, notebooks or water bottles that your employees will wear with pride. I often see in the street lots of employees wearing with their Atlassian, Airbnb, Facebook, Airtasker, – you name it – t-shirts with pride, so if you thought a promotional branded item was an old school or boring reward, think again.

Another way of offering a creative company reward is organising some time for employees to have lunch – or even a drink – with the CEO. For example, at the Big Red Group of companies Naomi Simson, one of the group founders, organises walking catch ups with 3 or 4 employees at the time, during which, each employee is allowed to ask any question (personal or professional) and learn from one of the best entrepreneurs in Australia.

Unexpected rewards are also very popular. For example, a DJ! – Wednesday is usually a day where everyone wants to feel like a Thursday (just because is closer to Friday!!!) so imagine your employees arriving at their desks with a DJ playing chill-out music as the day passes on. How cool hey!

2. Personal Development Rewards

Helping an employee to be the best version of themselves involves personal and professional development. Asking an employee over an email if they would like to read a book and which one, and getting it for them is a personal and unique way of rewarding an employee.

I remember one occasion that my manager asked me if I was interested in reading a book and the next day I had it on my desk! – It made me feel great. Again, it is not the reward; it’s the delivery.
Sending employees to conventions and conferences is also a great way to boost professional development. Learning the ultimate best practice trends in the industry and refreshing processes with new information, tools, or software is always something positive for both, employer and employee.

3. Local Rewards

Redii, our employee recognition and reward software has more than 3,000 rewards to chose. Local things to do such as meals in restaurants, museum passes, attractions, experiences, and getaways are something that our clients can offer to their employees through the exchange of the points that are attached to each moment of recognition.
What are your thoughts so far? Easy right? Well, keep an eye on our next blog where we will continue to give you practical and creative employee recognition rewards to wow your employees.
Until next time! Your Redii friends.

Linking Employee Recognition with Employee Wellness

The #HellaWella award story

Employee recognition has evolved in the last couple of years. With its roots as a process for recognising great performance, achievements and expressing gratitude, more companies are starting to see its power as a tool for inspiring other types of behaviours like learning and achieving health and wellbeing goals.

As employees, we are overwhelmed. Interestingly in his keynote at the 2017 HR Tech Fest, Josh Bersin showed us a powerful statistic. Since 2011 global productivity gains have slowed to a crawl. We made a big leap with smartphones but since then, we’ve been busier getting busier not necessarily more productive.

The average mobile user checks their phone over 150 times a day, more than 80% of companies rate themselves as complex or highly complex for their employees. The more complex the business the more likely we are to have multiple touch points and a need to stay connected via mobile. As Bersin summarises, we are more often suffering from FOMO. That sense that what we are doing is not what we should be doing, that we should be looking at the 101 other things that might be better than what we are doing!

As employers, the only way we can make big leaps forward in our collective productivity is to help our employees cut through the clutter. Remove some of the addictive behaviours (150 times a day phone checking) that have become the norm.

As corporations we too have a role to play in the health and wellbeing of our employees. We play the part of the catalyst for stress and anxiety in many cases but not the cure.

Wellness and wellbeing is a hot topic, with many businesses choosing to take action with company-wide wellbeing strategies. Bersin’s view is that health, fitness, wellbeing and performance can be compounded into a single driver as a commitment to our employees. ‘Sustainable Performance’.

Yes we care about performance but we also care about HOW you deliver it. Stress claims, burnout and absenteeism can all be impacted by a focus on sustainable performance.

It’s not that hard to get off the ground. For those already committed to an employee recognition program adding a wellbeing element can be as simple as adding an extra award.

Here’s an example of how we did it internally using the Redii platform at the Big Red Group of companies.

We created an award called #hellawella (healthy and well), it’s an employee wellbeing award in which each employee sets up a personal fitness/wellness goal with a 30-day time frame to complete it.

On this occasion, it was the Redii team that decided to participate. Everything started back at our Christmas team lunch – a few of us wanted to get rid of a few extra kilos gained over winter, others wanted to focus on meditation, be more committed to going to the gym, learn something new or improve overall wellness.

So the award was turned on by the following rules:

1. Set up a personal wellbeing goal that can be measurable.
2. Create a comms channel or group to share progress (e.g. slack or yammer) to share progress. (app graphs, before and after pics, videos, gym check-ins etc.)
3. Commit to a 30 Day period.
4. Have fun and become the best version of ourselves (which by the way it is one of the Big Red Group values, the company holding Redii.com
5. The winner receives 500 points that they can exchange in the shop for a reward.

The impact
43% of the team completed and achieved the goal they set and 14% of those partially achieved it.
The group was highly engaged through the challenge and inspired by the level of personal transparency.
The group reported feeling motivated and challenged because they were accountable to their peers.

This wellbeing challenge has given us the opportunity to come together in something that is unrelated to work, which is great for team dynamics and now several of our clients have expressed an interest in running similar challenges.

A recent and comprehensive study by the UK Government reviewed the evidence on employee wellbeing and its potential impact on workplace performance. It suggests that an improvement in well-being will result in improved workplace performance which directly impacts profitability.

Finally, here is the winner of our #hellawella award challenge… Jade wanted to fit into an old pair of shorts and after a 30 day of tremendous commitment to a healthier diet, the next pic speaks for itself. Well done Jade, you are the #hellawella winner.

Using gratitude as part of your growth strategy

Expressing gratitude is one of the easiest ways to grow your business. And the cheapest. Richard Branson is literally the best example I can give of founding hundreds of companies, underpinned by a simple ethos.

Gratitude is easy but not often harnessed for its incredible positive impacts. Now, however, technology has evolved to the point where gratitude can be used as a tool to grow your business. Delivering recognition – anytime, anywhere.

Modern employee recognition programs function like a central nervous system for culture. Providing you with signals as to how your business is feeling and performing. Collecting the stories that shape your culture and the metrics around those championing it.

One of our clients, Amicus Group, are a team of building and interior designers who create incredible working environments to bring incredible cultures to life. So it makes sense that they also believe in the power of recognition. They wanted to give their 80 employees across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, a tool to bring their values to life, to celebrate each other’s achievements and just say thanks.

Using Redii, they launched a program called ‘Amicus Achievers’ with their values of teamwork, positivity and accountability at the core. Here’s how it works:

PEER TO PEER RECOGNITION

Employees are encouraged to celebrate team members, and so Amicus have a peer to peer award that employees can nominate each other for. And according to James Kemp, co-CEO of Amicus Group, this has “made a significant difference in reinforcing one of the values of his company, teamwork”.

From a psychological perspective, recognition does two things.Firstly, it talks to the basic human need for esteem. What we’re doing is actually useful, noticed, appreciated. Secondly, it reinforces the other basic human need for ‘connection’:Someone cared enough to say thank you. Connection is what forms powerful teams. Teams who work together for the good of the whole and appreciates the role of each individual in the big picture.

TOP DOWN RECOGNITION

Senior Leaders at Amicus Group get together once a month to identify the people who have gone above and beyond, and lived the values of teamwork, accountability and positivity. After the selection, those lucky employees receive a monthly award of further Redii points.

Having recognition delivered and – importantly – acknowledged by senior leaders within the organisation again contributes to those two core human needs of belonging and esteem. And it’s also proven to drive employee engagement, unlocking discretionary effort and commercial outcomes for business. Your team genuinely want to give you more!

If you are in the process of scaling or changing, an online recognition tool can help you harness and celebrate the behaviours you want to see in your business to drive success.