A motivated workforce is worth its weight in gold, and there’s no better way to maintain enthusiastic staff than having a rewards scheme. Many companies have been offering some sort of employee rewards program for decades, from works nights out to the coveted long-service carriage clock.

But with a skilled, motivated workforce, employers are always looking over their shoulders to see if their top staff are being sufficiently recognised to stick around, or being tempted to seek pastures new. Making rewards fun, personalised and meaningful is a good way of keeping them from straying. We’ve collected a few winning ideas from the world of business, so maybe you’d like to try some of them out?

Ideas for employee rewards

You’re only really limited by your imagination when it comes to reward schemes. But it’s always good to get to know the person before offering one up. A claustrophobic person probably wouldn’t want an escape room experience, for example, and a vegan might not fancy the cheese-making day. A good compromise is to offer a list of rewards and allow employees to choose the one they want, or offer alternative employee rewards where there’s a smaller number.

Here’s a brief list of ideas, though – we’re sure you’ll be able to think of many of your own. Some reward individual members of staff; other say thank you to a group or team for a job well done. And there are also times you just want to say thanks to the whole company.

· An extra day’s annual leave

· Amazon vouchers

· Cinema or concert tickets

· Experience days

· Bring your pet to work days

· Park in the director’s space for a day

· A weekend city break

· A bundle of lottery tickets

· Donut or muffin delivery

· Cooking lessons from a professional chef

· A company barbecue

Saving up with tokens

Employee incentive programmes don’t always have to be one-off events. You could have a system whereby individual rewards win the employee a certain number of tokens. These can be kept in a stacker so they accumulate as the good behaviour continues. Then the real fun starts.

As the token pile reaches certain points, they can all be cashed in for a reward there and then, or the employee can opt to go on collecting for bigger and better prizes. This is a great way of ensuring ongoing enthusiasm as the goal for the next threshold approaches.

This type of award can be on an individual basis, or small groups or teams can collect as one for an even better team experience.

Just let the system be treated as a bit of fun and not too competitive, and make sure similar success is rewarded consistently from person to person, group to group. Reward systems that seem to benefit the same group of people all the time soon create a bitter taste. And that’s the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.

If you’re looking for tokens to runs such an incentive programme, take a look at our range.