There’s a special balance for managers and business owners to find in their working environment to ensure productivity is always at its peak levels and its more than just allowing staff to organise their own annual leave. Preventing burn-out in the workplace is a hot topic and something that requires more focus than ever with economies pushing more people to work longer hours and in some cases, multiple jobs, just to afford to maintain a basic lifestyle. It’s important that employers put support systems in place for their employees, this allows them to have somewhere to go if they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed and ensure that nobody reaches the point of no return and ends up out of work due to preventable illness.

Productivity comes from reward, reward is not necessarily monetary but can be anything that brings happiness to individuals. For instance, employees working longer days than the average 8 hours will welcome every opportunity for a short break, even if it’s 5-10 minutes to rest their feet or get some fresh air. These small rewards are important for employees and will make them feel more valued. Going beyond small rewards, larger businesses can implement bonus schemes and tailored rewards plans that allow staff to gain better rewards for showing company loyalty and impressive work efforts. Click here to learn more about bonus scheme design services.

Small Rewards

Rewards of a smaller size work best in smaller businesses or businesses with unique operating times and practices, such as the longer shift pattern reward scheme mentioned previously. These sorts of rewards aren’t based in direct monetary bonuses but cover a broader range of reward types. Offering employees time off, accrued additional annual leave days or vouchers towards a free lunch work well in an office format, while offering additional work equipment or to cover licensing or hire fees for a set time covers more practical jobs. These sorts of rewards in some cases can offer more value than a monetary alternative would offer, through business discounts and direct supplier accounts. 

Bonus Schemes

Bonus schemes are driven by monetary awards and can be used to inspire employees to work harder and more efficiently in the right places. Bonus schemes can be designed in house or with the assistance of dedicated pay review and pay scheme companies that can help direct you to a cost-effective bonus scheme that allows for well-received employee bonuses without too much interruption to the present account flow. Bonus plans are flexible and can be set at an individual level, team level or business level or a combination of each. This ensures no-one feels like they haven’t been fairly rewarded and helps teams inspire each other and keep each other working at a level pace. 

Tailored Rewards

Tailored rewards require more internal resources than any other type of reward as it means really getting to know and understand each of your employees and offering a reward that uniquely appeals to them and their wants and interests. Tailored rewards offer employees more incentive to work efficiently and reach company targets as it is something they get to be a bit selfish about, rather than needing to think of how they can best use extra time off or spend or save any monetary bonuses for their families needs. 

All reward structures require some resources to implement. Consider carefully what sort of reward scheme would best serve your workforce and how much time and investment you can realistically achieve to make employees happy without compromising the financial security of the business and putting everyone’s jobs at risk. Where necessary, seek the advice or services of a pay review company who can assess your accounts and help you plan rewards and bonus schemes safely. 

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].