Joshua Reeves
Co-Founder and CEO,
ZenPayroll
Ben Peterson
Founder and CEO, BambooHR

Why do we really need to
give incentives?
in•cen•tive
in-ˈsen-tiv
noun
a thing that motivates or encourages one to do
something.
“employees have an incentive to increase their sales”
synonyms: inducement, motivation, motive, reason, stimulus,
stimulant, spur, impetus, encouragement, impulse

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Reward and Recognition
Reward = Extrinsic Recognition =
Intrinsic
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Incentives of the past,
present and future
Money is only the 3rd most important thing to employees and
less than 1 percent of employees care about free food.
Advancement and work/life balance are what your employees really
care about.
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Why do incentives matter?
“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly,
and they will show themselves great.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Incentives help companies recruit
new talent and retain current
talent.
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
If you don’t incentivize,your
competition will nab your talent.
86 percent of companies have a reward
and/or recognition program in place.
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Good incentives will get your
desired outcome.
“Incentives can focus on a single behavior and can be turned up and
down quickly depending on the effect you need.”
—Paul Hebert, Fistful of Talent
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Tip 1: Make it personal
For employees, the recognition is as important as the reward. When
you tailor your incentives to match the employees and their
contribution, you’ll get an additional boost for the recognition.

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Recognize Good Work
“From having a little card that says, 'I caught you doing something
well' to just going over and shaking someone's hand in front of
everybody, there are tons of ways you can recognize your employees.
The key is to do it publicly in
front of other employees.”
—Paul Facella,
Everything I Know about Business I Learned at McDonald’s
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
How You Can Make it Personal
Give company-wide “kudos”
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
How You Can Make it Personal
● Give personalized gifts
● Match charitable contributions
● Offer continuing education
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Care is Motivational
“Fortunately, in a tight economy, what motivates employees most are
free things, such as being praised and receiving care and compassion.”
—Larina Kase, Ph.D., The Confident Leader
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Tip 2: It’s not all about
the money.
“People think more frequently about noncash tangible incentives (merchandise and travel)
than cash incentives and that as the frequency of thought increases, performance
increases,”
—Professors Scott A. Jeffrey
and Gordon K. Adomdza, Human Performance.

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Offer flexible hours and
work/life balance.
“As long as the employee is deserving and doesn’t abuse the privilege,
this can go a long way to building trusting and mature relationships with
key workers.”
—Richard Martin, Alcera Consulting Inc.
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Thank your employees personally.
“The two most underused words in corporate America that get the
highest ROI and ROT are the simple words 'thank you,'”
—Michael Guld, Guld Resource Group
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Make work a great place to be.
90 percent of employees find a fun work environment very or
extremely motivating.
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Give your employees growth
opportunities and chances to
advance.
30 percent of employees desire growth opportunity in the
company as a type of recognition.
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Tip 3: Institutionalize
your Incentives
While it’s great to reward your employees uniquely and personally, it’s
also important not to create too many one-off perks. Haphazard
rewards are inefficient and can create confusion for your employees.

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
How to Create a Perks Program
To institutionalize your incentives, follow these three
steps:
1. Make it transparent
2. Make it flexible
3. Make it fair
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Perks You Can Institutionalize
● Flexible Vacation Days
● Flexible Bonus Spending
● Bring the Perk In-House
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Tip 4: Measure the
success (or need for improvement) of your
incentive program
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results.”
—Albert Einstein

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Did you think about the
details?
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
—John Wooden
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Some things can’t be measured.
“Incentives help engage employees, and engaged employees enhance your
bottom line. So yes, incentives are an indirect route to bottom-line results. And
no, you shouldn't let the indirect-ness of their link to the bottom line discourage
you.”
—Intelispend
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Tip 5: Don’t Forget
Your Culture
Your incentive structure is a reflection of your company culture. How
you manage and deliver perks is one way to make your company
stand out.

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Inject Culture into Your Incentives
ZenPayroll: At ZenPayroll, we have a special monthly award given to an
exemplary employee, voted on by her peers. The winner gets a $1K bonus, $500
of which is to be spent on the office at her discretion.
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Why it Matters
Culture is the differentiator between you and your competitor, which can be
impactful to hiring and retention in this improving job climate.
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What can you do today to
make incentives work for your
company?

5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
Thank you!
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
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5 Tips to Make Incentives Meaningful and Retain Employees
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