Published on March 21st, 2020 | by Sunit Nandi

How to Motivate Your Teams with Rewards and Recognition

Teams just don’t happen; they are built. Built through teamwork, motivation, commitment, and trust. So in this article, we will be dealing with some compelling tips and strategies that you, as a team leader, may use for work.

Flexibility with Schedule

This is something all of us crave for. We crave more control over our schedule because all of us want some time off, or there are certain events we don’t want to miss, and let’s face it all of us fall sick. So rather than being upright to who is over their desk at what time if you make more emphasis on the results. The employees would feel more trusted and have a sense of control over their day.

Identify Your Employees’ Needs

Rewards always tend to motivate people to work harder, so they might earn more of it in the future. But your employees would only want to reap the rewards if those offered are really what they need. Hence, identifying your employees’ needs is a remarkable phenomenon. There are three theories through which you could determine your employees’ needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

This theory states that physiological needs and safety needs should be fulfilled before any other kind of needs. Hence, meeting an employee’s physiological needs would make them feel safe and motivate them to put more effort into working.

Herzberg’s Hygiene and Motivation Theory

This theory states that there are specific standards of hygiene and motivation factors that an employee craves for:

Hygiene factors include

Salary
Technical Supervision
Company Policies
Working Conditions

Motivational factors include

Achievement
Recognition
Responsibility
Advancement

Alderfer’s ERG Theory

ERG stands for Existence, Relatedness, and Growth. In this theory, existence sums up to physiological needs; relatedness sums up to safety and love belonging, while growth is about self-esteem and self-actualization.

Use of Extrinsic Rewards

If you notice that our employees are less productive, you can use extrinsic rewards to put them back on track. Extrinsic rewards include factors like money or any other sort of rewards, say a promotional code or honor of recognition for their ideas, help in boosting employee productivity. You can also deploy employee recognition software and get the desired assistance.

Creating a Reward System

It is a fact well acknowledged that rewards tend to lure us all into work. Awards and recognition together work wonders on an average employee’s productivity. An employee would work more to gain rewards that are offered if their performance is up to the mark. Therefore, creating a reward system is the best alternative to go for. It is not complicated as by the determination of needs by all the theories priorly elaborated, and you could target your employee’s needs and create a reward that would benefit as well as complement their needs.

Appreciation and Acknowledgement

This is the most important thing you could do to attract and retain talent. Also, this is one of the steps that is always overlooked as its simple yet not fully practiced to its potential. All it takes is to celebrate, acknowledge, and appreciate people publicly for their hard work.

Tags: how to, motivate, recognition, rewards, team

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.