30 Incentives For Employees To Motivate Your Team

Looking for an incentive for employees to motivate your team? This is the place!

In this article, we discuss some of the best ways to encourage your employees to give their best and work hard for your business.

Effective Incentives For Employees

1) Recognize A Job Well Done

A simple yet effective incentive for employees is recognition for a job well done.

Take the initiative to offer commendation whenever possible — even a quick “Good job!” as you pass in the hall — and your employees will feel like valued members of the team.

2) Bring A Pet To Work

Set aside one day every week or month and allow team members to bring their pets to work.

As an incentive for employees, this one is fun for all — team members with pets will enjoy showing them off while team members without pets will enjoy interacting with animals throughout the workday.

3) Say Thank You

Sometimes, the best incentive for employees is a simple thank you.

And it doesn’t have to be an elaborate thing. Even just a sticky note saying “Thanks for your hard work” can go a long way toward keeping your team’s motivation and engagement high.

4) Offer An Attendance Bonus

Another effective incentive for employees is an attendance bonus. You can set up the program however you like and offer any dollar amount for perfect attendance (e.g., $50 every month they don’t miss work).

5) Set Up Professional Development

The absence of professional development in your business can lead to lack of engagement and less competence on the job.

Create a professional development plan as an incentive for employees so that your team gets the training they need to excel.

6) Upgrade Your Team’s Workspace

Having the right tools is essential for getting work done on time. A great incentive for employees that helps in this regard is to upgrade your team’s workspace.

It could be something as simple as replacing the aging copy machine. Or it could be something as extravagant as purchasing an adjustable-height desk for each employee.

7) Build Wellness Incentives For Employees

Build wellness incentives for employees and watch their work performance skyrocket.

You’ll certainly pay for it upfront — putting in a workout space in your office or paying for gym memberships can be costly — but the happiness and productivity that result will be well worth the expense.

8) Implement Profit Sharing

Looking for an incentive for employees that improves both productivity and morale? Implement profit sharing.

A simple way to do this is to set aside a percentage of the net profits for four months, six months, or 12 months and divide it equally among your employees.

9) Create A Reward Space

Set up a reward space — an office, for example — that includes a fancy desk, a comfy chair, and plenty of amenities. Then, offer this incentive for a day or week as a reward to a high-performing employee.

10) Develop A Years-Worked Program

This is another incentive for employees that doesn’t cost much but still motivates your team to greatness.

For example, perhaps the reward is a green shirt at the end of the year. The more years worked, the darker the shirt.

11) Allow For Unlimited Sick Days

Give your employees the time they need to recover without having to worry that their job is at risk. This will help them recover faster and prevent illness from running rampant in the workplace.

12) Throw A Party As An Incentive For Employees

To paraphrase the lyrics from a 90s rap song: “Ain’t no party like a workplace party, ’cause a workplace party don’t stop!”

This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

13) Design A Spousal Death Benefits Program

This incentive for employees is effective because it extends beyond the individual team member to include the well-being of their family.

14) Institute Tuition Reimbursement

Make it easy for your team members to improve their skills by reimbursing part or all of their tuition when they take a class that is relevant to their job.

15) Give Employees A Free Vacation Day

Give employees a free paid vacation day that doesn’t count against their other standard vacation days.

16) Make Green Commuting A Reality

Offer this incentive for employees as a way to promote eco-friendly transportation.

Such a program can take many forms, but one method is to reimburse the cost of green commuting — via bike, bus, or train, for example — up to a set amount each day.

17) Take A Week Off At The End Of December

How much work really gets done between Christmas and New Year’s Day anyway? Take the week off to motivate your team and avoid all the stress that the holidays can bring.

18) Allow Employees To Pick Their Own Projects

Offer this incentive for employees as a way to empower high-performing team members, build trust, and motivate everyone to give their best.

19) Work A Flexible Schedule

Flexible scheduling gives team members a bit of freedom within an otherwise structured system.

Consider offering such options as:

• Four 10-hour days
• Rotating shifts
• 9-hour shifts Monday through Thursday and a 4-hour shift on Friday
• 80 hours in 9 days and then the 10th day off
• 6.5-hour shifts 6 days a week

20) Offer A Telecommuting Option

As recent events have shown, businesses of all types and sizes can be successful when their employees telecommute.

If you’re all back in the office now, consider instituting a policy that allows telecommuting one or two days each week as an incentive for employees.

21) Organize A Work Happy Hour

After a long week or month at work, a work happy hour may be just the incentive for employees that everyone’s been waiting for.

22) Schedule An Office Olympics

Running an office Olympics is a great way to relieve stress, improve communication, and build teamwork.

Get creative and come up with events of your own, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Garbage can basketball
• Rubber band archery
• Paper airplane javelin
• Typing test
• Treasure hunt
• Paper plate discus

23) Cater A Meal

It’s by no means an original incentive for employees, but it’s one that works.

Bring doughnuts for breakfast. Have pizza delivered for lunch. Or order a custom-decorated cake for an afternoon snack.

24) Allow For Family Days

Make it easy for team members to request time off or work from home when family issues arise.

25) Hold A Company Picnic

Think outside the park on this one and consider holding your event at an amusement park, water park, or mini-golf course.

26) Play The Lottery

Few things act as an incentive for employees like the chance to win a million dollars. Purchase some lottery tickets and hand them out periodically to motivate your team.

27) Relax The Dress Code

Within reason, relax the dress code just a little as an incentive and allow your team to wear their favorite t-shirt and jeans to work on Fridays.

28) Create A Special Parking Spot

Create a special parking spot for a high-performing employee. Then, reward that team member by letting them park in the special spot for a week or a month.

29) Gift Your Team Game Time

Surprise your team by bringing in a ping-pong table, pool table, video games, and/or board games. Then, give them time during the day to relax and unwind.

30) Rent A Barista For The Day

Rent a fancy coffee machine for a day. Bring in all the flavors and fixings and hire a barista to make all the drinks your employees want.

Manage Incentives For Employees With Inch

Whether you choose from among the entries on this list or create your own incentive for employees, you’ll notice that a single topic pops up again and again: time.

Time to take sick days. Time to focus on health and wellness. Even time to throw a party.

Time is one of the most valuable resources your business has and getting control of that time is one of the best ways to drive your business toward success.

But how can you control time and manage the incentives you choose? With the Inch workforce management app.

Inch gives you access to a suite of tools that makes organizing and optimizing your team’s schedules and activities easier than ever before.

Features include:

• Powerful task management
• Intuitive scheduling
• Comprehensive time-tracking (with geofencing)
• Dynamic reporting
• Time-saving payroll processing
• Customizable communication (e.g., location-specific or team-wide)
• Effective budgeting
• Productive labor cost optimization
• Helpful overtime control
• And much more…

All of that in a mobile-friendly app that you and your team can use on any device and with any operating system, wherever the job takes you.

For more free resources to help you manage your business better, keep your team on task, and track and calculate labor costs, visit TryInch.com today.