Often leaders tell me that they want to have more rewards in their repertoire to drive employee performance, especially the emerging talent in the 25-35 year old demographic, but they operate in a resource constrained environment. They don’t have enough resources to reward people.
There are five non-financial rewards that people say they want and these five non-financial rewards happen to be the five things that managers have the most control over, usually.
1) The number one non-financial reward people care about is having more control over their own schedule. A lot of people will work more hours if they can have some control over when they actually have to work.
2) The number two reward people care about is relationships: who do they need to work with? I don’t want to work with Mr. Blue; I want to work with Ms. Red. I don’t want to work with this boss; I want to work with that boss. I don’t want to work with this vendor; I want to work with that vendor. I don’t want to work with this customer; I want to work with that customer.
3) The number three reward people care about is tasks. I don’t want to do the grunt work; I want to do the really choice task. One army captain said to me, “I always say not every soldier needs to take a turn cleaning the latrine.” Well that’s right; you should give the choice tasks to the best people as rewards because it’s something that people really care about.
4) The number four reward is training; marketable skills. I want to learn marketable skills to make me more valuable in the future, perhaps somewhere else!
5) And the number five non-financial reward people say they care about is location. I don’t want to work in Calgary; I want to work in Montreal. I don’t want to work on this side of the building; I want to work on that side of the building. OK, if I have to work in this little cubicle, I really want to bring my dog to work.
Those are the five non-financial rewards people care about, especially the newer cohort.
They also happen to be the five things that managers have the most control over.
The question is, are you using those non-financial rewards you have control over to drive performance every step of the way?
The number three reward people care about is tasks. I don’t want to do the grunt work; I want to do the really choice task. One army captain said to me, “I always say not every soldier needs to take a turn cleaning the latrine.” Well that’s right; you should give the choice tasks to the best people as rewards because it’s something that people really care about.
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