Design employee reward programs that inspire and retain

People need to feel appreciated, so your workforce appreciation efforts count – both to motivate and to avoid burnout.

To support your people’s mental and physical well-being and incentivize performance, having the right employee reward and recognition programs are essential. But in this era of individualized choice, ‘rewards’ means different things to different people at different life junctures.

The ‘wrong’ employee reward programs – the ones that don’t meet individual needs – are part of the reason employees are burning out. To prevent it, organizations now need to go beyond the traditional contractual rewards of pay and broad-brush benefits plus ad hoc components.

How do you know what rewards your employees need?

Begin by asking them without preconceived ideas.

To personalize workforce rewards, companies have begun using ‘personas’ to identify what matters most to target populations and to operationalize their employee rewards program for distinct groups. 

Innovative rewards programs effectively address individual’s preferences – enabling them to feel healthy, supported, and energized, personally as well as professionally – while staying within organizational and cost realities. A balance can be achieved with the right reward and recognition strategy.

Having an outstanding reward and recognition program as a talent attraction tool is important in a competitive, employee-centric labor market. But once employees are on board, designing for employee engagement and retention becomes the real challenge. 

To stay with an organization, employees want rewards that enhance their professional, and increasingly – personal – experiences. 

Exceptional employers are developing employer-curated career paths and guidance and the more transparent and flexible these options, the better. Employers are becoming much more involved in employees’ non-work lives, too. Thriving organizations are embracing a holistic notion of well-being, providing programs to bolster people’s physical, financial, emotional, and social health.

Finally, employers must offer rewards that connect with employees through a sense of common purpose. Motivated employees see their work as contributing to a larger purpose, not just as a job. Employers can nurture a truly unique connection with the organization by: 

• Aligning business goals with societal goals,
• Designing meaningful jobs or creatively deploying skill sets, and
• Fostering links between employees and company innovators.

To solve your most pressing employee reward challenges, we also offer Packaged Workforce Reward consulting solutions.

Irrespective of organizational size and structure, the most common employee reward issues often hinder organizational agility. In response, we have developed a range of solutions that can be used to bring structure and drive consistent decision-making when addressing the most common workforce reward hurdles.

Our Packaged Workforce Reward consulting solutions are built on Mercer’s HR consulting heritage, delivering best practice design combined with practical tools. Our solutions establish the foundations for more effective HR and employee reward management in the areas of highest focus, including: 

• Grading and pay management 
• Sales compensation 
• Company cars
• Gender pay reporting and equal pay.