How rewarding is it to work for you?

Today’s subject is reward culture. How do you think the one in your company would compare to the competition?

Let’s start from the basics, aka pay. Do you pay the legal minimum or just slightly above? Do you see that as fair pay or something that is what you can afford now? (By afford, I don’t mean what you are willing to take away from the stakeholders, but any spare money you have to spend on staff) How does the starting pay compare to the pay at the top?

If the lowest pay is the legal minimum, I do hope the tasks involved are the bare minimum, too. If not, I hope your staff finds something else soon. Way too often, I see companies paying as little as they can legally get away with and then requesting maximum effort and extra miles in exchange. That is ridiculous. If you want a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, you know you won’t get it for the same price as a Dacia or Citroen. If you hire people only to make money for the stakeholders, I do hope you find the laziest staff available. As someone low-paid, I know said: “I get paid the same anyway, why should I care?” Why do you expect someone to work extra hard for the minimum they get legally anyway? The only winner in that set-up is the person doing the bare minimum, and I can't see why they should win.

Is the pay in your company the same for people with a lot of experience, directly relevant to the job description or not, or does experience give people more? Is that ‘more’ reasonably more for the value they can bring, or just a minimum extra to make it look like there is a difference? If someone who has just got in straight from school and has no work experience, but gets paid the same as someone with decades of work experience, why is that? Again, the inexperienced person is the only winner in that setup. Why would anyone want that to be the case? Why isn’t someone who can bring more value to the company being rewarded for that, made to feel they are valued and given reasons to stay? Sounds like they are being punished for agreeing to work for you, and that makes no sense. Why would someone work hard for minimum pay only to maximise someone else’s profit? 

I have never understood why the pay would decrease with experience, but that is the case, especially in hospitality, where working hard to become a manager often can lead to less money per hour than for the hourly-paid young starters. And yet for some reason, not many companies seem to address that issue. That is just one example of a situation where you incentivise people to go elsewhere. If your job title is valuable only to a competitor, then it makes sense to look their way.

To me, it seems that most companies determine pay based on the legal requirements and what others do, rather than really thinking about how much it costs their staff to keep themselves alive and commute to work every day. All that is directly affecting their well-being and even health. How much is inflation affecting their life, and do you want them to be able to have savings in the future or just get into a loop of slaving off for the company and surviving from one payday to the next? Do you take into account how that affects sickness days in the company, mental as well as physical?

As well as the basic pay, bonuses are another thing that makes a difference for anyone’s well-being and motivation to work. They are one of the best ways to motivate staff to go that extra mile if you don’t want the lazy newbie to be the biggest winner. However, for that perk to work, the system needs to work too. If a bonus is promised for agreed achievements, then that also needs to be paid according to the rules when those achievements have been reached. When bonuses are not respected or paid on time, they stop working as the motivator they were created to be, and ignoring the value of bonuses is as short-sighted as paying the bare minimum for maximum effort.

Another thing is perks. Are any perks offered really bringing value to the staff, or are they there just to look like something is offered as a tick-box exercise? Burning people out and then providing them a phone number to call for help is not ‘looking after your staff’, and I wouldn’t call that a perk either. And let’s not even start on free fruit. Anyone would be a lot better off being able to afford to buy their own fruit, and I bet that would cost you less as well.

Work can be rewarding in the way that you get positive feedback as well. If the desired results are achieved, who receives the congratulations, the team or only the manager? Does this depend on the person congratulating, and is this somehow instilled in the culture? When the team does most of the work, but the manager gets all the accolades, how does that motivate anyone to continue doing good work?

Another way to reward your staff is more material. Do they get seasonal gifts or little things like notebooks or USB sticks for random occasions? Is there a welcome pack waiting for new starters, and are there rewards or company trips on the menu as well? When thinking of promotional items like notebooks, water bottles and those USB sticks, are they actually good quality or the cheapest ones available and break as soon as they are used (or even before that)? When it comes to a welcome pack, is everyone getting one for sure or do some people see others drinking from a similar coffee cup and wonder where those come from? A missing welcome pack is not a great way to make someone feel welcome and part of something. Surely not a first impression anyone wants to make?

"The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers" -Richard Branson

Whatever the reward culture, it only makes sense to use money wisely. Short-term thinking does not bring great long-term results in general, so it is worth thinking about the value every spent penny brings and where it makes sense to spend a bit more for better results in the long run. 

Some of the worst examples of 'rewards' I know are a £10 bonus, announced with an “Enjoy!”, a tiny chocolate bar, and my personal favourite - a laminated thumbs-up emoji as a thank you for hard work. I can assure you none of those make the recipient feel valued, nor do they want to stay for long, working harder than they get paid for. Maybe it is worth letting anything along those lines grow interest and then be given when there is something meaningful to give.

So, to recap, if you want your staff to work hard, it pays to pay for it. Making people feel that they are valued and their effort is noticed is the best way to keep them engaged and to make them stay for longer.