How managers reward staff on a limited budget

Recent research from Best Practices reveals that even though travel and time off are rewards used less frequently by benchmarked companies, they are rated very effective by corporations, second only to cash rewards

Having a successful rewards and recognition programme can do wonders for employee morale, retention and overall workforce productivity. Yet 89% of benchmarked for-profit companies allocate less than 2% of their organisational budget to the management & maintenance of rewards and recognition programmes. This limited budget makes it difficult for managers to create effective systems and to find the right balance between monetary and non-monetary rewards for their employees.

Recent research on Benchmarking Rewards & Recognition programmes from Best Practices compares 131 organisations' data on the management of these programmes. Data is segmented between corporations and public or non-profit institutions.

Key Findings
Some key findings include:

• Almost 60% of respondents for both corporations and non-profit/public organisations say that senior managers often give rewards & recognition to employees on an individual basis.
• Even though travel and time off are rewards used less frequently by benchmarked companies, they are rated very effective by corporations, second only to cash rewards.
• Corporations and non-profit organisations rarely tie rewards to the employees' salary. When organisations do offer rewards as a portion of compensation, the standard percentage is between 1% and 5% of base salary.
• Common employee feedback on rewards & recognition programmes is to widen the pool of potential recipients; to provide more choices of rewards; to apply programmes consistently and fairly and to offer a greater amount of rewards, such as personal feedback, in a more immediate fashion.
• Over three-quarters of organisations have a formal rewards and recognition programme. The majority of companies do not base their programmes on a theoretical model, but rather on company values or goals.

The findings in the document were drawn from primary research conducted through the Internet Benchmarking Exchange - a Global Benchmarking Council service based on benchmarking between multiple companies over the Internet.