Revealed: the best way to engage and motivate employees

One of the most talked about chal­lenges of the Covid recov­ery is tal­ent recruit­ment, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and reten­tion. UK busi­ness lead­ers are fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant skills short­ages, due to a spike in employ­ee attri­tion and com­pe­ti­tion for resources dri­ving up salary offers. When it comes to employ­ee engage­ment strat­e­gy, there seems to be a lot of guess­work still going on. We see busi­ness­es imple­ment­ing new ideas on a whim, and a size­able num­ber are still not doing any­thing at all. So, what’s the best way to tru­ly engage and cre­ate loy­al employ­ees?

The main head­line? Rewards and ben­e­fits work. 52% of employ­ees say that receiv­ing rewards and recog­ni­tion would moti­vate them to exceed their goals, and a fur­ther 38% would stay with their employ­er for longer.

Yet 37% of employ­ees say they are not cur­rent­ly being recog­nised or reward­ed at work at all. This fig­ure ris­es to 47% of peo­ple work­ing in admin or man­age­r­i­al roles. It is clear­ly a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for many employ­ers.

A ques­tion often asked is what sort of reward to give. Our research tells us that a third want “a gift card to use at a vari­ety of retail­ers” as one of their top three pre­ferred rewards. Pair this with the indi­ca­tion that employ­ees pre­fer rewards that link to their hob­bies and inter­ests, and you’ll soon find your­self pro­vid­ing an appre­ci­at­ed, choice-based reward. When delv­ing deep­er into the most pop­u­lar inter­ests, the major­i­ty of employ­ees cit­ed food and drink (64%), ahead of 57% say­ing enter­tain­ment and events, and 39% who favoured sport. Our data also shows that reward­ing on a month­ly or quar­ter­ly basis would sat­is­fy two thirds of the UK work­force.

What do peo­ple expect to be reward­ed for? Almost half say “for the ongo­ing effort I put in at work”, which is in con­trast to the typ­i­cal approach of reward­ing those who go above and beyond. The oth­er major rea­son is for “achiev­ing a major goal or mile­stone”, whether as an indi­vid­ual or as a team. This high­lights the need for bal­ance, not just focus­ing on those who have gone the extra mile, but those who are doing their job as expect­ed.

We also asked which spe­cif­ic employ­ee ben­e­fits are most valu­able. Top of the list at 40% is “a [reload­able] pre­paid card that offers rewards for every­day spend­ing”, tied with pri­vate health­care. As the cost of trav­el goes up, it’s no sur­prise to see 34% demand­ing trav­el expens­es.

Nat­u­ral­ly, we also want­ed to find out which perks are over­rat­ed. Only 9% appre­ci­ate in-work­place rewards such as fruit bas­kets, free lunch­es, or free gym mem­ber­ships as a top-three ben­e­fit.

A focus on men­tal health has now become a pri­or­i­ty. Offer­ing manda­to­ry ben­e­fits such as a pen­sion and annu­al leave is no longer enough. Of the respon­dents, 93% believe it is impor­tant for employ­ee ben­e­fits to have a pos­i­tive impact on men­tal health, with three-quar­ters rat­ing this as “very impor­tant”. Only a few years ago com­pa­nies bare­ly con­sid­ered men­tal health. It’s a huge indi­ca­tion for employ­ee engage­ment strat­e­gy in 2022 and beyond to see this rat­ed as the top con­cern.

Con­clu­sion? There’s a spec­trum of needs. No sin­gle work­place ben­e­fit or reward will cov­er all cas­es, but offer­ing a range of solu­tions that aid men­tal, phys­i­cal and finan­cial health is like­ly to sat­is­fy the major­i­ty.

Read the full report at: Blackhawknetwork.co.uk

Black­hawk Net­work is a lead­ing provider of incen­tives, rewards and ben­e­fits. We col­lab­o­rate with our clients to engage with the peo­ple that mat­ter most to their busi­ness.

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