10 Ways to Reward Your Employees for Free

Rewarding employees is a crucial and effective way to ensure that your employees stay motivated and maintain a high morale.

Studies show that employee morale, retention and overall satisfaction are key performance indicators for business success and the lack of these qualities directly affects the success of every business. This process is often very costly, however, especially for those running a small business.

There are many ways to build employee morale without having to resort to spending lots of money, on the other hand, here are ten:

1. CEO for the day

   Choose an employee to be the ‘CEO for the day’ and give them reasonable power to make a few fun and effective decisions and suggestions that all employees will enjoy, and which management can learn from. This exercise allows for trust building, which is proven to boost morale.

2. Acts-of-service-auction

   Run an auction during one of your company functions, such as an appreciation dinner, offering your employees the chance to win small and personal acts of services from management as prizes. For example, the winner can win the chance to have a cake baked for them by their manager, or a cooked meal, a car wash and so forth. This is sure to help boost morale, strengthen unity and a good laugh across the office.

3. Showing appreciation

   Hand-writing a ‘thank you’ note for an employee and leaving it on their desk to be read first thing in the morning, is both heart-warming and motivating. You could also organise ‘thank you’ meetings for employees who have gone out of their way to benefit the business. Small gestures such as these are effective because public and personal appreciation helps employees to feel valued, acknowledged and important.

4. ‘VIP’ meet and greet

   Another option is to introduce an employee to the ‘VIP’ members of the company or ‘VIP’ clients that they normally wouldn’t have contact with. This will effectively encourage the employee as it shows them that they are important. This also helps to break down bureaucracy.