Rewarding People

W

William Cannon

250+ Posts
Managers, how do you reward your employees? Individual contributors, does your manager do anything unique or special to reward you? There are always different types of bonuses, gift cards, comp time to award, but what are some other things that tell or show people appreciation (small and big)?

BTW, I have the 1001 ways to reward employees book. I just don't have the time to read about all 1001 ways.
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But seriously:

1. Gift cards are nice just make sure they are appropriate for the person you're giving them to. Don't give a Best Buy card to a single, older woman who professes to not having cable or internet at home and likes to spend her time knitting sweaters for her cats. Or a Barnes and Noble card to a Sooner.

2. Lunch on you. Either as a group or one on one, a free meal from the boss is always welcome. Just make sure you're not taking the hot young secretary for extra long lunches.

3. Time off. Even if you can't give them a whole day, there's nothing wrong with letting someone sneak out early on a Friday or come in late on Monday.
 
I'll usually do a small thing a couple times a week just to try and keep people a bit happier during busy times.

Ordered the team "designer" milkshakes yesterday from a fancy place nearby -- just a treat.

Gave everybody tomorrow off after they pulled in a big presentation.

Doing lunch next week..

Just **** like that.

But you're probably looking for something bigger....eh, cash money?
 
I'm a manager now, but my favorites as an individual contributor were...

1. Cash (but you already do that)

2. Time off-- loved hugely by employees who want to spend more time with their kids.

3. Vacations- My last 2 companies would send people on trips to fun locations (Caribbean cruises, resorts in places like Whistler, trips to the Caymans, etc.)

4. Booze Cruises on Lake Austin catered with food.

5. Paint ball outings.

For the record I'm in software R&D, so I don't know if companies outside that field do that.

One thing we've done a couple of times, and for the record this is for a primarily male group, is rent out the Iron Rock race track at ABIA for endurance races in the morning and then go to lunch (alcohol included)... with the afternoon off to go boozing or whatever people wanted to do individually (movies at Alamo, etc.).

It's tough on the group outings because it depends how much your people like each other... so it definitely depends on the group dynamic.

If you're specifically asking about rewarding individuals then time off and $$ were always the favorite... and when doing $$, actual cash or a gift card with a certain amount on it (AMEX, Visa, etc.) are great.

Anyway, those are the first that come to mind.
 
in my old life, i used to be a manager. time off goes a fuckload further than people might think. i'd randomly give my assistant off an hour early on friday. i didn't make it a pattern or regular, but i'd just roll in and tell her to take off.

that chick would've walked through a fire for me.

now she has my job because when i left for japan, i made sure she got my job.

awesome. she really took care of me.
 
The owner of the company I work for (small company, less than 70 people) will cater in BBQ or subs or something on random Fridays. And makes sure there is some vegetarian stuff for the folks we have that are on diets or are vegetarians.

Or he'll bring in a bunch of ice cream or something.

One time (when we only had about 20 employees) he took whoever wanted to go (and one guest each) to a UT football game. That turned out to be about 2/3s of us. To those that didn't want to go. he bought some movie passes that included drinks and food.

We've also done a lake party, a casino night (with prizes), and other stuff like that.

One time, when I first started here, I had just finished a big job early and made the customer pretty happy. As I was walking out to my car, he came running out and handed me a couple of 100 dollar bills and told me to take the wife out to dinner. And thanked me for doing such a good job.

He still does that on occasion. Very cool. And makes the employee feel pretty special.

And, like the others here have said, days off are the greatest. Its pretty neat to have your boss walk by and either tell you to give someone a day off for doing a good job, or to tell you to take a day for doing good work...

And random days off. Like the other here say are the greatest!
 
I don't know about meager rewards so much. Yeah sure, we went to play laser tag once. That was fun.

Time off is probably is probably the coolest thing.

Working for the legislature we would put in 460 hours of OT in 140 days, working 70 hour weeks the entire time.

I also got 10 hours of vacation per month and 8 hours of sick time per month, so I had almost 800 hours to blow during the interim between legislative sessions.

I would take 3-week trips to Italy, Greece, France and Amsterdam, England (Scotland, Wales), Dominican Republic, Mexico, and China with my time off.

I was rewarded for my efforts by being given almost a half of a year off for busting my *** for the same amount of time that they were giving me.
 
I work in an organization of about 100 people. Management gives these plastic/glass trophies with corporate mumbo jumbo written on them. People just pile them in the corner of their cubicle. During a recent 'town-hall' meeting, management asked for things that would improve corporate moral, etc. I suggested they stop giving us those crappy trophies and offer us the $4.99 they purchased them for instead. Everyone clapped except for management. Well worth it.
 
I suppose it depends a lot on the size of workplace and the type of work, but I usually find that actually giving a **** about their day to day quality of work and recognizing it goes a long way. It seems these days that most people feel like paid robots and that no one pays attention to them.

If you care about your employees, listen to what they need in the workplace and respond quickly they stay happy. Ask about their families, what problems they are having and help them out where you can. Then the occasional small money, gift gesture or home baked cookies, etc goes much further.

The people that expect money or gifts usually feel crapped on and that will only go so far before they walk out one day.
 
i'll send them home early ever once in a while, and do all the closing stuff on my own. Or let them change clothes and go ride an attraction while on the clock...there's not a whole lot we can do so as to maintain "fairness and consistency" across property. Which gets annoying, but it just makes us have to be more creative to get recognition in there.
 
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