Why does your company need incentives? Usually, incentives are needed in order to motivate team members to excel and improve their productivity. Incentives are entirely personal and drive people forward in many aspects of their lives. Many theories state people are pushed into action and motivated by internal drives, otherwise known as an incentive, motivated by a desire to achieve something. This applies to both personal and professional life; be that a personal fitness goal, an educational challenge, learning a new skill or excelling in the workplace.
How important are incentives at work?
Rewards and incentives are incredibly important at work. Incentives help employees to aspire to excel, achieve, and improve. So much of employee retention is driven by company culture, employee satisfaction, and a clear career path. Opportunities to excel and grow in the company are all great incentives for employees to nurture a career at your company, as opposed to jumping ship. Incentives are what keeps us motivated, and when given the right incentives, employees can not only excel but exceed expectations and deliver above and beyond.
Of course, a key factor of incentives is the reward. Recognition and rewards go an incredibly long way in keeping employees engaged, motivated, and invested. By recognizing their contribution and success, and rewarding them, companies show they care about their employees, which is why reward incentives and opportunities to excel, win and be recognized are revolutionizing the way people work.
How to make incentives fun with gamification
Consider the desired outcome
With any gamified initiative or incentive, it’s important to think about what you want to achieve. You want to motivate your employees, but to what end? What is the key driver of launching employee engagement programs? Understanding this will help you determine the desired outcome; it may be better peer to peer recognition, better lead generation, a more cohesive and collaborative team.
Deciding what the company wishes to achieve from an incentive at work can help ensure the program is tailored to those needs. No two incentive programs are the same, and with customizable incentives and gamified solutions, it’s easier than ever to target exact goals with a campaign. By creating a tailored solution that will help employees achieve both your goals and theirs, you are already ensuring you will see results.
Set realistic goals
Realistic outcomes are only possible with realistic goals. Set your sights too high and you will find employees disengaged and demotivated. Creating realistic goals that are achievable, and fun incentives to meet those goals, can transform the reward experience for employees and therefore drive them to do better, and push the company forward.
Make incentives visible
If you want your employees to get excited about an incentive or recognition scheme, then you need to get excited about it too! By making incentives visible, impactful, desirable and accessible, employees are far more likely to get on board, get excited, and stay interested.
Nowadays, gamified incentive programs, reward schemes, points, levels and leaderboards are easy to access via remote company-wide platforms. A nod to traditional sales team leaderboards, these online platforms create a naturally collaborative and cohesive space where incentives stay top of mind. Easy integration and automation also make it easy for employees to engage with employee incentive programs, seamlessly integrating them into their workday.
Make incentives collaborative
Employee incentive programs can also be a great way to bring team members together. Be that in competition, or working together to achieve a goal, by fostering an environment where peer to peer recognition is standard, companies can transform the way employees approach work.
With virtual leaderboards, opportunities to congratulate each other, and a philosophy of teamwork being praised, companies can boost productivity, team spirit, output and success easily through a gamified incentive program. Teamwork can bring in new perspectives, and make employees naturally challenge themselves to be the best they can be, purely because there is somebody to hold them accountable.
Bring in a little competition
We are all naturally competitive. It’s in our DNA to want to be the best. Ok, maybe we don’t need to think like a hunter-gatherer, but in both our professional and personal lives, we are driven to be the best we can be. What better way to encourage us to be the best version of ourselves, than a little healthy competition in the workplace?
Competition can help keep us on our toes, forcing us to challenge ourselves to be better, work smarter, and bring a fresh perspective. If we are never challenged, how can we grow and improve? Competition brings this issue to our doorsteps and forces us to react and respond, in whatever way that may be. No matter what the setting or the challenge, natural competition can elevate our performance and productivity without even realizing it. What’s more, a little friendly competition among colleagues can mix up the workday and inject a little fun into the normal routine.
Make incentives personalized
As well as invoking a sense of competition and collaboration, another way to make employee incentive programs fun is to make them completely personalized. No one can deny the little thrill we get from personalized automation or branded message. It says a lot about the company you are working for if they are investing their time and energy into personalized solutions that are tailored not only to the brand but also to individual employees.
Want to learn more about how incentive programs can transform your business? Check out BeeLiked’s latest incentive program, BeeLiked Rewards, or head to our blog for further insights.
