Blackhawk Network
Fostering team member engagement is a key goal for most managers, but with so many employee reward program options, it can be hard to know which will work. Today’s employees have re-evaluated their career goals and now look for more than just a job.
Employee engagement isn’t just as simple as happiness at work or job satisfaction. It’s also about feeling involved, committed, and enthusiastic. Employees want to work where they feel engaged and invested in the mission. When they do, there are positive outcomes for the whole company. According to Gallup, organizations that have engaged employees experience 81% lower absenteeism and 23% higher profits.
How to Foster a Culture of Employee Engagement Using Rewards
Employee reward programs are important in recognizing the hard work and accomplishments of your teams. But they can also create engagement that helps managers create a positive workplace culture. Here are three ways you can boost engagement via your employee reward program:
1. Encourage Employee Feedback
Peak employee engagement happens when workers feel their employer values their feedback, often collected via surveys, and actually listens to them. But some team members could still be reluctant to give feedback, either because they’re worried about retribution or they think it’s pointless and nothing will change.
To ensure you compile a full spectrum of survey responses, from unhappy and happy employees alike, try incorporating incentives with a tool that can protect anonymity. When you can decouple reward delivery information from each survey submission, you can better encourage participation and honesty.
2. Incentivize Training Opportunities
Training is vital to keep your workforce current on the latest developments in your industry—and it’s also a key component of employee engagement. But while employees often name learning and development as important pieces of their work satisfaction, ever-expanding to-do lists can trump training opportunities. If learning sessions are voluntary, employees may not prioritize them, especially as workloads grow. Mandatory session participation, however, may be seen as another part of that expanding workload instead of a strategic focus on employee development.
A better approach is to offer employee reward program ideas that show how much you value the effort it takes for your workforce to advance. Digital incentives reward employees for taking time to complete professional learning opportunities—which will make them feel more engaged and supported.
3. Target Remote Team Members
Remote employees are often difficult to engage since they don’t experience in-office team connection opportunities. As a result, they can feel underappreciated and isolated. According to a 2022 Workhuman survey, nearly 40% of hybrid workers and 30% of remote workers feel less recognized than their onsite counterparts. It can be easy to overlook people who work remotely in terms of engagement and recognition. You may receive casual feedback from in-office employees as you grab a snack in the office kitchen or end up chatting in a hallway — connection opportunities that aren’t possible for remote employees.
Try to specifically seek out engagement touchpoints with your remote employees. Leveraging an employee rewards program can make it painless to send rewards anywhere — including internationally — and you can include your whole workforce in your engagement efforts. This includes team events, training opportunities, and feedback surveys.
A Few Other Employee Reward Program Ideas
Employee satisfaction, happiness, morale, and engagement are all related and important to retaining members of your team, recruiting new team members, and growing your business. Consider these additional tips for creating a smart employee environment:
- Try simpler employee rewards and recognition when large bonuses aren’t an option; they can equally as effective
- Include hybrid employees in your team events
- Promote your team’s well-being so you’ll have healthier, happier employees
