To make your employees perform to their full potential, it is important to keep them motivated. Employees play a vital role in the success of an organization. The more engaged and motivated your employees are, the higher the chances of your organization’s success. This is the reason why employee rewards programs have become an important part of almost every business. It is not necessary to offer monetary rewards or expensive gifts to your employees, but recognition and appreciation are also equally valuable. Studies have shown that employees who are frequently appreciated are more engaged at work.

If you are planning to implement an effective but inexpensive employee rewards program, here are some best ideas to consider:

1. Celebrating Personal Occassions

Celebrating personal occasions like birthdays and work anniversaries of your employees is one of the best ways to make them feel valued. You don’t need to organize an expensive party, but just send your employees personalized messages, give them a day off on birthdays, send cakes or chocolates, and let them know that you are thrilled to have them at your organization. Similarly, you can organize small work anniversary celebrations in the office, where your employees as well as you can share your experiences of working together.

2. Peer-to-Peer Appreciation

Peer-to-peer appreciation is not so popular strategy but works effectively in making the employees feel motivated at the workplace. By encouraging your employees to appreciate their peers, you can create a healthy work culture at your office. It further increases employee productivity and engagement. Promoting peer-to-peer appreciation is totally free of cost, but is one of the best engagement activities for employees. Encourage your employees to appreciate each other’s work, contribution to a particular project, or any other achievement they have made.

3. Social Media Shoutouts

Social media is a great platform to leverage your reward programs for employees and engagement activities. Many companies that use social media to recognize their employees often observe an increase in the motivation levels of their employees. You can give a social media shoutout to one or a few employees every week for their commendable work. Write a post describing the milestone they have achieved or their great performance and publish it along with their photos on your social media account. Make sure that you recognize every employee at some point in time to keep their engagement levels high.

4. Personalized Thank-You Notes

Personalized thank-you notes can work much more amazingly than you expect. Whenever an employee completes an important project on time, you can thank them for their contribution. Keep a hand-written thank you note on their desk and they will definitely be thrilled after receiving it. Though you have the option to send thank you emails or text messages, hand-written notes are always more effective. Make sure that you don’t miss out on any opportunity to thank your employees and make them feel appreciated.

5. Creative Tailor-made Rewards

Tailor-made rewards that align with the interests of your employees are truly encouraging for them to perform better. Some companies only focus on offering rewards without worrying about the interests of their employees and this is one of the biggest reasons why their corporate employees rewards programs don’t work. By offering creative rewards that add value to your employees, you can motivate them to perform even better in the future to receive higher rewards. Some best examples of creative rewards include an upgrade in the office chair, a personalized office desk, etc.

6. Monetary Incentives

Offering monetary incentives is quite an expensive deal, but it is totally worth it when your employees have performed amazingly on a project. You can offer performance-based incentives to selected employees who have fulfilled their deadlines, excelled in a project, etc. If you want to keep your incentive program less expensive, don’t offer incentives every month, but you can do it once every three-four months. Just make sure that every employee receives monetary incentives at regular intervals so that they continue to give their best at work.

7. Learning & Development Rewards

Monetary benefits or expensive gifts are not the only options to consider when you want to offer some valuable rewards to your employees. You can even boost their engagement by providing learning and development-based rewards. Provide them with access to educational webinars, send them to conferences, and allow them to access online courses of their choice for free. Everyone wants to grow their skills while doing a job. By giving your employees an opportunity to learn and develop their personal skills, you can give them an additional reason to work at your organization and perform their best.

8. Organizing Lunch with Top Performers

Another amazing idea to boost employee engagement is to organize lunch for monthly top performers with the company owners. You can choose one or multiple employees who have performed the best in a month and allow them to have lunch with the leaders of their company. Team lunches are one of the most effective ways to improve team building and work culture. If organizing an outdoor lunch seems challenging, you can just order the favorite snack of your best-performing employees and get it delivered to their desks along with a thank-you note.

9. Include Gamification

Gamification has become a powerful tool that companies are now using to make their corporate employees’ reward programs more interesting and effective. By organizing gamification activities for employees, you can create healthy competition at your workplace and motivate each employee to perform to their full potential. Some best gamification ideas include the employee of the month program, game-based learning or certification programs, achievement badges, etc. You can partner with rewards and loyalty solution companies like RewardPort to gamify your reward program for employees in the best way possible.

10. Monthly Awards and Recognition

Rewards and recognition are effective when offered on a regular basis. Another great way to boost the productivity and motivation levels of your employees is to run monthly awards and recognition programs. At the end of each month, give your employees feedback reports on their performance throughout the month. Make sure to add some positive as well as negative (if any) feedback in this report. Recognize the employees who have shown consistent dedication and hard work throughout the month and award them a certificate of appreciation.

11. Gift of Flexible Timing

Everyone values time and if your can gift some time to your employees, it would be one of the best rewards for them. Whenever an employee completes a project on time or gives an excellent performance, you can allow them to leave a few hours earlier or to come a few hours late on the next day. If this doesn’t sound like a good idea, just allow them to work from home for one day. Flexibility in timings is something that every employee wants and if you can offer this based on their performance, you can motivate them to give their best every single day.

12. Award for Punctuality

There are some employees who are always on or before time. Encouraging them to continue this behavior is important. When you reward punctual employees, it doesn’t only motivate them, but their co-workers are also encouraged to reach the office on time. You can track the timings of your employees and offer rewards or recognition to the ones who have been punctual through the month, quarter, or year.

Build Your Employee Rewards Program With RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top rewards and loyalty solution providers offering a range of services, including employee rewards and recognition programs. The team of experienced marketing professionals at RewardPort can help you plan and implement an employee rewards program as per your requirements. With rewards starting at as low as Rs. 10, RewardPort is the best company to consider if you wish to have an effective but inexpensive employee rewards program.