Are you an employer who is looking to incentivize your employees? Do you want to go beyond simply giving a cash bonus or a raise? While there is nothing wrong with recognizing an employee's hard work with a monetary amount, sometimes that doesn't feel sufficient to express all the gratitude that the employee has been doing for the company. Acknowledging the hard work that your employees put into everything can be a great way to increase employee retention and productivity. Some ideas that can help with this goal include:

Annual award ceremony

Nearly everyone enjoys having their hard work and sacrifice acknowledged in front of his or her peers. To this end, you should hand out the most important employee awards at an annual or semi-annual ceremony. The ceremony doesn't have to be terribly formal, but it should, at the very least, include a brunch or lunch for everyone who attends. If you do want to be more formal, you could actually book a restaurant for the ceremony rather than just ordering pizza or otherwise having the food brought in and left in your break room.

Extra time off

In addition to any plaques, certificates, or other physical employee awards that you might hand out, one great incentive for increasing productivity is being able to get extra time off of work. You may choose to hand out paid or unpaid days off but both will be appreciated by a hard-working employee. These are days during which they can take care of personal matters, handle sick kids, or just take time away from everything. Although you'll lose the benefit of their labors during these days when they're off work, the additional time and effort that they'll spend to earn these awards should more than make up for any time otherwise lost.

Ask your employees

If you're having a hard time coming up with ideas that you think will work with the employees that you have or your employees don't seem to be reacting as positively as you'd expected when you hand out the awards, don't be afraid to survey them and ask them what kind of employee awards that they'd like to see. Every individual is different, obviously, and has different wants and needs. An award that encourages one employee may make another employee discouraged or even apathetic. The lack of enthusiasm for various awards shouldn't be taken as a slight against you personally, it's just that everyone has their own tastes.

For more information, contact a business such a Trophy Awards.

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