Keeping Workers Happy with Rewards

How to Keep Workers Happy

Money's nice but public approval from the boss counts for plenty

How workers feel about their work can make the difference between a successful firm and one that cannot keep up with the competition. Workers who do not feel they are valued are often reluctant to innovate, to work harder, to seek to become more efficient. Here come a few advice:

How effective are financial rewards?

Financial rewards are overstated in both practice and in the perceptions of managers in thinking they are the most motivating to employees. There is a lot of evidence that says there are motivational aspects to money, but there is much more power in non-monetary rewards.

Then what are the most effective rewards?

The most motivating rewards tend to be initiated by one's manager and people one works most closely with. The best ones are personal, such as being specifically told in a timely way you did a good job by your manager. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said their manager seldom did this.

Second was being told this in writing by your manager. Then something else in writing, such as a note in the personnel file, something put in the company newsletter about you, a thank-you note to the family because your work has taken you away for some time. Public praise also tops the list.

What kind of public praise? It could be as simple as bringing in a tub of ice cream. Ben and Jerry's give away ice cream to employees – two pints a week. To motivate employees you don't need money as much as you need managers to take the time to be thoughtful and creative. The general rule of thumb is you want to praise publicly and reprimand privately.

Praising the winners! Photo by Elena.

What are the benefits of behaving like this to your employees?

They're looking for ways to pay it back, through extra work, ways that can help customers, any number of ways. The reward system is not altruistic at all. You are doing it to get people to perform better. We are not talking about manipulating people, we are talking about finding out what motivates them. The more we do that, the more people want to work with us and do a good job for us.

Should rewards be limited to performance, or are all staff rewarded?

The once that are best, are performance-based. You should start there, but once the philosophy becomes part of your culture, not everything you do has to be performance-based. You can have general moral meetings. There are things you can do to help develop the whole culture. You can set up proposals that encourage people to catch each other doing things right, anyone can give formal praises to anyone else, they get it in writing, they get a plaque, at the end of the year they get dinner with the rest of the plaque winners in the company.

Would you reward management differently?

Motivation is a very personal thing. It changes with where you are in your life, in your career. People yearning $200,000 per year, they want a chance to influence where the company's going. As you work with people who are higher paid and perhaps better skilled, different things tend to motivate them – things like increasing responsibility, increased visibility, ownership, independence and autonomy. You've got to get to everybody. Everybody needs to feel special.