Are you a business owner? Perhaps you have been put in charge of planning and producing a strategic corporate rewards scheme for the company, or simply a new CEO who would like to implement one in place. Regardless, you might be wondering about the process of launching a rewards scheme.

In particular, what considerations should be made when it comes to planning the launch of a strategic corporate rewards scheme?

In this article, we will cover everything that you may need to know regarding this! By the time you finish reading this, you should be better informed about strategic corporate rewards schemes and how to launch one.

What Is A Strategic Corporate Rewards Scheme?

First and foremost, let us define what a strategic corporate rewards scheme is. In essence, it refers to a long-term approach regarding a company’s reward policies and practices to ensure everyone’s needs are being met efficiently and effectively.

What can be included in a corporate rewards scheme can vary from company to company, so it is not always a ‘one size fits all’ solution. However, many employee benefits and employee recognition programs can have positive impacts on employees in general, so you will commonly find similar reward schemes between companies.

Strategic corporate rewards schemes are important because they align both the goals of the organisation and the goals of employees, hence the ‘strategic’ aspect. Rewards can be both extrinsic (benefits received as part of the job) and intrinsic (employee satisfaction as a result of meaningful work contribution).

A few examples of rewards that could be incorporated into such schemes include:

• Private healthcare (employer-funded)
• Access to training opportunities for professional development
• Wellbeing initiatives – meditation sessions, fitness classes, mental health awareness seminars, etc.
• Financial wellbeing policies – access to financial advice, discounts, and vouchers, workplace savings, etc.
• Yearly bonuses
• Extra paid time off/holidays
• Flexible or remote working options

Identifying What Your Employees Want

So, what are the first steps in launching a strategic corporate rewards scheme?

Step 1: identify the wants and needs of your employees.

A strategic corporate rewards scheme is only successful if it becomes valuable and effective for employees. This means that the reward options that are available should be meaningful for your employees, allowing them to choose from a variety of options that are motivational and meet their needs.

Do not make the mistake of assuming you know what your employees want – take the time to conduct surveys and more, gaining insights into what types of rewards your employees feel are most beneficial and important to them.

For example, one survey discovered that 95% of respondents deemed flexible hours as an employee benefit more important than remote work. Should your surveys show similar results, it would be a good idea to implement flexible work hours as part of your corporate rewards scheme.

This could be an incentive for better work performance such as allowing employees to finish early on certain days of the week should they complete their tasks before the deadline. Another example could be incorporating later starting hours as an employee reward for excellent attendance at work.

This can both boost employee morale and reduce employee absenteeism if there are incentives in place to encourage employees not to miss work for trivial reasons.

Tracking Employee Rewards

To truly ensure that your strategic corporate rewards scheme is effective, enabling rewards to be tracked is definitely something to consider. This allows both employees and managers to track and measure employee progress when it comes to rewards.

How is this possible, you may ask? Through a corporate rewards platform, of course. Such platforms are able to offer tools that can help measure not only rewards being received by specific employees, but also employee engagement, productivity, performance, and more.

As you can see, these platforms are extremely valuable when it comes to launching a strategic corporate rewards scheme, so empowering both managers and employees to track rewards should be prioritized.

Setting Targets

Performance-based employee rewards require pre-determined targets so that employees are aware of how they can be rewarded for their efforts. Certain guidelines and policies, therefore, need to be created regarding how employee rewards are given based on work performance.

How you decide to set targets for rewards is ultimately up to you, but you should take into account how challenging they can be and whether your employees are able to achieve them, otherwise, the rewards become pointless.

Particularly, it is important to think about:

1. Clarity on how the reward scheme works – specifications on the criteria for receiving a reward is key
2. Meaningful and motivational rewards – rewards should boost employee morale, encouraging their productivity at work
3. Targets should be achievable and related to employee roles – this may mean that different targets are set for different job roles

Including Team Rewards

Whilst rewarding individual employees can be excellent at improving that employee’s satisfaction and happiness, rewarding teams as a whole is also worth considering when it comes to a strategic corporate rewards scheme.

A group reward system can assist with fostering a collaborative work environment, encouraging employees to build healthy relationships with each other. An example of a team reward could be monetary rewards or team experiences that are given as a result of a team project exceeding goals and expectations.

This encourages groups, in general, to work harder and to work cooperatively, cultivating a work culture that champions teamwork. Do not overlook team rewards in a strategic corporate rewards scheme if you truly want to maximize its effectiveness.