Six tips to get your rewards right

With reward programmes making up such a large percentage of your organisation's budget, it's no surprise that HR needs to be able to explain and prove their ROI. You need to get them "right". Easy, not! To help you meet this challenge, award-winning HR leader and consultant and bestselling author Debra Corey sets out six things you need to think about and address.

1. Always start with and focus on your strategy - your "why"

Too often we rush into designing or redesigning our reward programmes, jumping into the "what" and/or the "how" before addressing the "why". This can lead to costly mistakes as you end up wasting time and/or money by randomly putting things in place that too often miss the mark. Think of it as like shooting arrows into thin air instead of aiming at a target.

One example of this occurred when I was getting pressure from my employees and leadership team to introduce "pawternity leave". It was a benefit that everyone was talking about at the time as BrewDog had put it in place. The problem was that it didn't align with our reward strategy which revolved around balance and choice as it only met the needs of dog lovers. And even though I was/am a dog lover, we had others who were lovers of other pets, furry or otherwise. So instead of jumping in and adding this, we paused and ended up putting in place flexibility to work from home and/or take time off should employees wish to take care of a pet to align with our why.

2. Don't get stuck in the past

The next "too often" is when companies get stuck in the past, keeping or putting in place rewards that are no longer relevant. Just as your business should evolve to meet the changing needs of your customers, your reward programmes need to do the same, evolving to meet the changing needs of your employees.

One of my favourite examples of a company not getting stuck in the past is Spotify and its flexible public holiday benefit. With a diverse workforce drawn from over 90 nationalities, it decided to challenge the cultural norms that are traditionally projected onto employees, considering that these might not reflect each person's observations, beliefs and lifestyle. The result was letting employees choose to work on a day that is a public holiday in the country they work in, or swap it for another working day instead. As its HR blog explains, "This means they can be off of work on a day that fits their observations or beliefs better. For example, someone who works in a country where Christmas is a public holiday, can now choose to work on Christmas Day and switch it for a day off on another date that is important for them to celebrate. Yom Kippur? Diwali? International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia? It's their day, their choice."

3. Meet the needs of your multigenerational workforce

With five generations in the workplace, it's a given that a one-size-fits-all approach to rewards is not going to work. Your rewards need to reflect and support the needs of these different generations if you truly want to live out your DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) strategy. 

An example comes from my book Appreciate It! The Playbook for Employee Recognition. In it I explain the differences that exist in perspectives, experiences and expectations of each generation, and how they need to be taken into consideration when you design and deliver your recognition programmes.

For example, Baby Boomers grew up in a world where recognition was rarely spoken about and rarely given. If it was, it was usually as a thank you for their years with the company, or for contributions on specific work or projects through ad hoc or annual bonuses. What this means is that recognition, especially recognition given regularly, may not be something that is expected or natural to them as it wasn't part of their upbringing. You'll need to help them understand the power of recognition, making them feel comfortable both giving and receiving it. 

Generation Y, on the other hand, may have been exposed to a more continuous approach to recognition at work. As such they may expect recognition to be less formal and more frequent, and may not want to wait five years for a long service award or a year for an annual award. It has become much more normal to expect recognition in the workplace to mirror how people recognise and react to their friends outside of work, in a social context.

4. Meet the needs of your diverse workforce

The previous tip addresses one aspect of diversity: age. However, as we all know, there are many other elements that factor into the diversity of our workforce. Whether that's gender, religion, culture, personality, etc, they all have an important part to play when you're considering and addressing your people's needs. 

It's for this reason that I always challenge my clients to consider aspects such as balance and choice in setting their reward strategy. Balance helps you have a portfolio of rewards to meet the diverse needs of your people, and choice puts decision-making in the hands of your people since, try as you might, often you can't know all of their individual needs.

5. Make sure your pieces fit together

Using the words "too often" yet again, another mistake I've seen companies make is to fail to look at the full picture - at all of their rewards together. Do they fit together like a lovely puzzle or do they contradict one another, eg one sends one message to your people and another sends the opposite message?

For example, when reviewing the benefits of one of my clients, I noted that they all treated employees fairly, giving everyone the same thing regardless of job level and tenure. At least I thought so until I reviewed their holiday entitlement, which was based on tenure. I flagged this as it was a piece of the puzzle that just didn't fit, and we ended up changing it so that all of the pieces truly fitted together.

6. Have reward programmes and policies built on trust

The final tip is one that, like many of the others here, applies not just to your rewards, but to all of your people strategies, programmes and policies. Too often companies design ones based on mistrust, putting in place rigid rules and steps for the 1% of employees who are going to abuse them. We need to flip this on its head and design ones built on trust, not letting mistrust trip up what we're able to do and say to our employees through our reward programmes.