How rewards help improve employee experience

Reward your employees with rewards

Companies that want to get the edge in 2020 will be thinking more holistically about how their customer and employee experiences may interconnect.

Good customer experience is grounded in how well a company interacts with a customer to meet their needs from the customer perspective. It’s about embedding systems and innovative solutions to offer customers the best experience possible from their branded interactions.

Good employee experience is simply about how well a company services the needs of its people – people who choose to invest their most important asset in company-life, their time. As Gallup suggests in Designing Your Organisation’s Employee Experience, “Employees have become the consumers of the workplace”.

If the new frontier in customer experience is more about happy employees and improving workplace culture, and your company is prepared to put in the work, rewards are achievable.

Employee experience matters

Positive workplace culture and workplaces are where employees feel valued, recognised and engaged to strive to bring the best they can.

Almost half of the 3.4 million people representing 10,000 companies in the Best Place to Work survey expressed poor employee experiences; key outcomes linked with low employee experience found strong degrees of personal unhappiness and poor business performance. For the companies where employees reported an average experience, they lag top performing companies in areas including recruitment, productivity and agility.

Named 2019 Best Place to Work for their strong culture framed around service and giving back, companies like Cisco are winning on experience and the talent acquisition race. But for many companies there’s a lot of work ahead.

When the experience is low, not even the most creative marketing, promotions, products and services can prevent a company from missing out on market opportunities and the ability to beat competition.

Trends to think about

There are a lot of options available to companies who want to improve their employee experience and make a positive shift to their workplace culture. Trends to solve the negative experience gap are using a mix of solutions from wellness initiatives and real-time training opportunities.

Cisco’s Jump program is a good example. It focuses on leadership skills building for women in mid-level management; and DHL’s Fit For Work, which offers employees access to healthy food and yoga classes.

One of the simplest ways to integrate these trends into a workplace can be through employee rewards solutions.

Here are four key rewards solutions that could make all the difference to your employee experience.

1. Rewards that recognise input

As people are wired to seek out rewards, when employees see their efforts being recognised and rewarded, it fosters a positive culture of gratitude. How the gratitude is expressed is where unique rewards solutions come into play.

Rewards that speak to a gratitude theme could involve a dining gift card or spa gift card, which give employees a memorable experience for achieving workplace goals.
Dining gift cards give employees a moment they can saviour, a night away from the kitchen and an experience to share with their families and friends.

Spa gift are a stellar way to pamper, they offer a feel-good and invigorating experience. This not only has broad appeal in an increasingly wellness-minded modern world, but also aligns your brand with a positive, holistically healthy message.

2. Getting personal through rewards

People are unique with diverse preferences. An employee experience that recognises and celebrates individuals for their efforts and offers bespoke rewards that reflect diverse reward preferences can rate high with all employees.

Lifestyle Rewards, as a fully branded platform (across app and desktop) providing access to personalised offers from hundreds of leading retail, travel and experience brands. It is a great way to bring to life diverse reward preferences, offering a unique end-to-end solution reflecting both companies and their employee’s needs.

Lifestyle Rewards can have tailored reward partners specific to region, making it beneficial for companies with employees in geographically dispersed workplaces.

Lifestyle Rewards offer employees the opportunity to access diverse and personal rewards, whether it’s a preference to save for the trip of a lifetime over the end of year break, weekly personal training, or shopping vouchers to help with weekly bills.

3. Regular rewards help retain talent

Recognition and rewards at regular intervals is a great motivator and incentive for achieving ongoing work milestones.

Timing corporate gifts around annual milestones such as corporate gifting in the festive season is equally important. Rewards like branded Eftpos and Visa gift cards, can build strong connections with employees and momentum for the year ahead. They give your employees the freedom to spend on items they choose or help with those grudge purchases like groceries and petrol.

4. Pick popular rewards

Going to the movies remains the most popular leisure activity across the UK, North America, Australia and NZ, making movie tickets the ideal reward that’s sure to please.

Recognising gold-star effort from employees with a pampered and relaxing gold-class cinema experience is another way to reward employees who go above and beyond.

Movie ticket rewards are accepted nationally which is why they are favoured by companies who need flexibility and rewards that have broad appeal. For companies, movie tickets rewards are simple to administer, perfect for celebrating those mini-milestones and achievements.

Rewards build loyalty

Regular employee reward recognition programs provide the mechanism to incentivise and meaningfully celebrate an employee’s value to a business. When employee efforts are celebrated the whole business benefits.

Edge Pri offers an unparalleled range of reward solutions which are quick, easy and impactful. Contact us if you’re looking for solutions that add value and improve employee experience.