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Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Employee Engagement Culture (17-slide PowerPoint presentation). Improving Employee Engagement is a priority in most Talent and HR Strategies. This presentation provides a 5-step approach to building a culture of Employee Engagement. This processed was developed by Aon Hewitt based on the Aon Hewitt Top Companies for Leaders study. Best practices from the [read more]
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A few decades back, most companies had in-office workers only. This way, rewarding the best-performing individuals was more manageable. An employer could drop a gift or have lunch in person with them to show that they recognize and appreciate their efforts.
Today, things have changed, and more firms are embracing remote working. It has made many employers rethink their reward systems. Currently, most enterprises are looking for effective ways to appreciate their best-performing remote workers to keep them motivated.
Rewarding your virtual employees is quite essential. Since these individuals have no supervisor looking over their shoulder, it’s pretty easy for them to get distracted from their work. By recognizing their hard work, they’ll feel appreciated, which will boost their morale.
As a result, they’ll be more productive, loyal, and less likely to leave your company. Your happy workers will also spread the good word about you as their employer. It raises your firm’s image and helps you attract more investors, customers, and quality talent.
If you’re an employer looking for reward methods that could work for your remote workforce, this article provides some measures you could try, and these are:
1. Offer Them Points for Their Achievements
Giving your workers points for their achievements at work is one method you could consider. Here you’ll have to consider employee rewards and recognition programs. You could use a type of software that allows people to redeem their points for movie tickets, merchandise, or discounts at eateries. Such a tool can help your employees work harder to earn more offers.
If you’d prefer a reward and recognition program that doesn’t allow point redemption, the software could also be beneficial. Some of these tools have a leaderboard where each team member’s points are highlighted depending on their achievements. Even though this program doesn’t allow your employees to redeem their points, it’ll motivate them to work harder to perform better on the leaderboard.
2. Recognize Their Efforts Publicly
Public recognition can be pretty powerful and motivating. Therefore, when one of your remote workers performs exceptionally, consider appreciating them in your next video conference when every other team member is present. Alternatively, you could feature them in your company newsletter or blog.
3. Give Them Digital Gifts
Sending your remote workers with a physical item as a reward may be a bit challenging and expensive, especially if they live on a different continent from yours. Consider sending them digital gifts in this case. These can be restaurants or shopping e-vouchers, online therapy or movie streaming service subscriptions, or gift cards redeemable in e-commerce stores.
4. Donate to Their Favorite Charity Organization
You can also get a bit personal by asking the remote worker you intend to reward if they have a favorite charity. If they do, consider donating some money to the organization as a way of appreciating and recognizing their hard work.
That way, it can help you know your remote workers much better and improve your relationship with them. Besides that, you could also boost their morale, meaning your remote workers could increase productivity.
5. Offer Them a Workspace Upgrade
Sometimes remote workers are in great need of a workspace upgrade. They might want a new laptop or an ergonomic desk and chair. Besides that, they might want to shift to a better internet service provider or update some programs they use.
Therefore, if you’d like to reward a particular remote team member, consider asking them how they’d like to improve their workspace. You’ll help them better their workflow and productivity by offering them the upgrades needed. Besides that, you could also allow them to save some cash to cater to their personal or family needs.
6. Offer Them a Learning Opportunity
You could also reward your remote employees by offering them learning opportunities to develop their careers or themselves. For instance, you could provide part of or all of their tuition fees if they’re taking a higher learning course. Also, you could book and pay for online cooking, mentorship, meditation, or stress reduction classes for them.
Helping your employees upskill or improve themselves shows that you care about them. It could help you reduce your turnover rate.
Appreciating your remote employees is essential, especially since they don’t have a manager or supervisor looking over their shoulders. Recognizing their efforts helps them stay motivated and productive, despite their distractions.
That said, it can be challenging to reward your best-performing remote employees working in a different time zone or location. However, this article provides six creative ways to appreciate and recognize them. Implementing the above measures could help you improve their morale, productivity, satisfaction, and loyalty. Besides that, the virtual team members could spread a good word about you, and this could enhance your company’s image and reputation.
You can download in-depth presentations on Employee Management and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.
For even more best practices available on Flevy, have a look at our top 100 lists:
These best practices are of the same as those leveraged by top-tier management consulting firms, like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Accenture. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by utilizing these best practice frameworks, templates, and tools. Most were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with over 20+ years of experience.
