Reward and prosper

Cash may be king, but, as a long-term motivator, it has limited value; employees either get used to the amount that they are paid or resent the amount lost to tax.

In truth, to properly motivate staff, organisations require systems that recognise and reward. The fact that employee recognition is so important should be obvious for all to see. Countless firms have boards in the public domain that detail ‘employee of the month’, and they do this because they have understood that workers want not just money, but recognition among their peers.

According to Lauren Sweeney, head of people at Virgin Incentives and Virgin Experience Days, happy employees should be the aim of any HR team as ‘high staff turnover not only slows business growth and costs businesses money on recruitment and training, it also stunts company culture due to the continual change of personnel’.

Additionally, Charles Cotton, senior reward and performance adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) agrees, adding that a reward policy should be strategic and ‘support an organisation to reach its long-term business goals’. However, he thinks it can do more for ‘an organisation's objectives and legal obligations, as well as the needs of its employees—it can enhance a reputation as an employer of choice and help it communicate better its employee value proposition’.