Increasing productivity from existing staff is one of many ways to drive business growth – so what are the best ways to go about it? Generally, happier employees tend to be more productive ones, according to many sources. So how do you effectively reward employees and at the same time, benefit your business?

Simple Praise

It sounds boring enough, but simply taking the time to provide honest and genuine positive feedback to your team on their work can be one of the easiest ways to motivate staff: it’s also one of the most human. Thinking back to your primary school years, you probably put in more effort when you received praise from your teachers.

Invest in Them

If your team is performing well, spending $ on their professional development (individually or as a team) can work wonders for re-energising them to focus on their goals. Investing in staff makes them feel valued but also increases their skill base, making them even more valuable – it’s a win-win.

Flexible options

Not all employees are created equal – for many employees, the provision of benefits related to increased flexibility can increase engagement. These might include increased ability to work from home, late starts/early finishes or even paid leave.

Peer to Peer Recognition

Quite often, recognition from peers can be more significant than recognition from a Manager or Senior Leader in the business. By developing a peer to peer employee recognition program, employees are empowered to recognise excellence in their peers through a nomination and/or voting system. Develop some clear guidelines and boundaries around the system and encourage employees to recognise positive traits in others –it’s sure to have a positive effect on the workplace culture and performance overall.

Make it Public

Employees can receive as much benefit from being recognised publicly for their efforts than receiving an actual reward. Public acknowledgement in the form of a staff email, newsletter or inclusion on a staff intranet site is a low cost (and low effort) form of rewarding employees who have excelled at a project or completed a goal.

For more information on how to develop an effective employee recognition program, speak to the HR Consulting team at Flexi Personnel.