A robust and well-thought-out reward scheme can be a great way to motivate your employees. If designed in the right way, it can really help to get the message of what you value as an employer out to your staff. The reward and recognition of employees is all about positivity, you want to motivate your employees by giving them something to look forward to, such as holiday leave. Read on to find out about the fundamentals of putting together a reward scheme.

You should ensure that nobody is excluded from your reward programme. From day one in their life in your company, they should be eligible to earn the same rewards as those who have worked for you longer. When it comes to operating rewards such as an employee holiday planner, it is acceptable to reward service by giving staff who have worked for you for a long time extra days off but holidays should be available to everyone from the start of their employment.

If you are basing your reward scheme on performance, you need to make it clear to employees which behaviours it is that you are rewarding. Make sure you are precise in your communication when you introduce the scheme and that the information is disseminated to everybody in your organisation. You need to make sure everyone understands exactly what they need to do to earn those rewards.

Any criteria used to judge who should benefit from extra rewards should always be objective. It is never appropriate to use subjective criteria because this would always be open to manipulation and might leave your employees questioning your decisions. Objective goals, such as rewarding whoever made the most sales or those who received the most positive feedback from customers is much more effective.

The last thing that you want is for your employees to work hard to earn rewards, only for them to be forgotten about. This certainly would not be motivating. Make sure you develop tools to record the extra rewards that your employees earn so that they can take them at a time to suit them. If you offer extra holiday days, for instance, absence management software can help you record extra days that employees have earned.