This question is forever being asked with I’m afraid many different answers so is there one magic gift that everyone would be happy with?
The answer comes down to choice, just ask yourself would you be happy if when you sat down in your favorite armchair and switched on the TV you had the choice of BBC1, BBC2 and ITV? Well that’s what it was like 20 years ago and we survived, I hear you say. Yes we did survive because we knew no different, we now have the choice of hundreds of channels and I agree maybe only a handful of these are worth watching but we would feel cheated if we didn’t have the choice.
The same applies for rewards, we are all different and we want different things. Some of us may choose a reward for ourselves, our partner, our children or maybe granny’s birthday so by catering to the masses we will deliver the right choice each time.
Creating a well stocked reward catalogue can be time consuming and not as easy as might be first thought. Firstly, the rewards need to be attractive to the staff who are being rewarded – i.e. no point in offering a pamper day at a spa to a team that is predominantly male (well probably not!). Secondly, the reward catalogue needs to cover a range of rewards that are actually attainable by staff through the incentive scheme as it can be quite demotivating if staff realise that no matter how well that they perform they can never earn enough reward points to purchase anything. The rewards on offer also need to be aspirational – after all you are trying to motivate your staff to achieve more so you need some rewards that people might want to try a little bit harder to get. Lastly, there is definitely a seasonal element to rewards and you need to be able to vary the catalogue to include certain rewards that are appropriate for the time of year.
It can be hard work trying to do this on your own and my advice is let someone do it for you. Well I am going to say this; I’m one of those someone’s but when I write a blog I want to give out the facts and the facts here are that by going to a supplier who has done all the hard work for you you are going to get a more varied catalogue, and, because of established relationships with suppliers and a well tested fulfillment process a better service at lower cost.
Be creative, you don’t have to stick to traditional vouchers although a well favored choice. When your staff see there has been time put into every detail of their incentive scheme their appreciation of loyalty increases so by offering goods that they may not come across in everyday high street shops will create a buzz within the scheme.
Our own system, Incentivise, allows you to create separate catalogues for specific campaigns and specific groups of people so that you can always ensure that you offer staff the right incentive rewards for the right reasons at the right time and the right cost.
I’m always interested to hear about creative ways you have found to reward staff so please leave a comment or email me direct at niall.mccrae@incentivise.com
+44 (0) 1273 669 707
