Offering incentives to your employees is a great way to boost morale and it’s a great way to make sure that you are getting to most production possible out of your employees. The better your employees do, the better it is for your business and that makes for a great bottom line. However, you must be careful before thinking you can just motivate employees any way you like. Incentives cost money and incentives, if not chosen carefully, can end up being a waste of money. The wrong incentives won’t propel your employees to do any better because no one works hard for an incentive they don’t want. Here are some incentives you can try out on your employees to see what really gets them working for you.
Try giving them a gift card. The more generic you make it the more likely they are to want to work for it. For instance, working for a 100 dollar Visa gift card will give them the incentive because they can use it everywhere. Working for a gift card at a coffee shop won’t make them want to increase their efforts at work if they aren’t into coffee.
You can try giving out an incentive that isn’t cash based. For instance, try giving out an extra day off the next week, or an extra sick day or vacation day. If you can do this your employees might like the extra time off. It might be worth it to them and it doesn’t cost you any upfront money.
If you know that the people in the office like a certain event or there is a certain event in town, then offer that. Like give out basketball tickets to next months big game. People might not have been thinking of going but they like the idea of being able to take out their spouse or their friend. These incentive programs work if you just find the right incentive.