Four ways organisations get Christmas reward wrong…and how to get it right | Incentive&Motivation

Featured News: Four ways organisations get Christmas reward wrong…and how to get it right

Giving employees and the people you do business with an end-of-year reward or gift may be a longstanding tradition, but that doesn’t stop many organisations getting it consistently wrong.

This is the consistent insight from Edenred’s Christmas reward research which has found one in ten employees have received inappropriate gifts from the employers in the past. We also found that around a third of Christmas reward budget goes to waste.

It’s a fact that most employers could do with rethinking how they approach the way they say ‘thanks’ to the employees. Here, based on our research are four mistakes to avoid…and some ideas on how to get it right.

Same thing every year

It might be easy to place the repeat order every November for the wine / chocolates / pampering goods you give every year. But the law of diminishing returns applies to the enthusiasm with which your employees greet your predictable reward. To make an impact, do something different and do something new. Don’t do things just because they are habitual. Remember that today employees expect personalisation as a given.

The invisible cash reward

Once upon a time, some extra cash in the wage packet for Christmas actually meant an extra note – or bundle of notes if you were lucky – in a brown wage envelop and may have had some sort of impact. Back then it was easy to squirrel the notes away and save them for something special. These days cash in the wage packet is the ultimate invisible reward. It lands in the bank account at the busiest time of year and is forgotten as soon as the wage slip is filed away. For reward with impact, keep it away from the wage slip.

No thank you

The idea of an end-of-year reward is to underline your recognition of a job well done – it’s all about the ‘thank you’. Fail to say thanks and your investment is wasted, your gifts may be recognising something but your employees will be in the dark as to what and why that is. Maximise the impact of your end-of-year reward by making sure every employee gets a thank you. The thought really does count.

Lastminute.com

A third of Christmas reward gets lost, given away, or thrown in the bin. The reason for that is the wrong gifts get given to the wrong people at the wrong time. Christmas reward needs proper planning if you are going to do it right. Make your plans early to have everything in place and ready to go before the end of November.

Christmas reward is easy to get wrong, but it’s just as easy to get right if you take the time to think ahead. So, don’t wait for the mince pies to appear in your local supermarket to know it’s time make your plans for Christmas. Get on the case today.

To read the full employee research, download the guide to ‘Christmas Future’ here.a

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