Rewarding at Perkbox

Dates in the diary

Recently, for Employee Appreciation Day, every Perkbox employee received a sum of Reward points, along with a message of — you guessed it — appreciation from the CEO.

Things like this go nicely alongside all the other things within our People initiatives. It’s a good idea to draw up a calendar of key dates and select the ones you feel are most appropriate (we also create a quarterly calendar which might come in handy!).

Popular holidays can also be used as a time to give people that little bit extra — for example, Christmas or end-of-year celebrations. One of our clients has employees in India and sent Reward points to them for Diwali!

You can also look at dates which are specific to your business, such as your company’s birthday. These have the extra advantage of tying rewards in with your values… which leads us neatly onto our next point.

Meeting your values

In our experience, the best results come by rewarding people who live up to your values, or do things that are aligned with who you are as a company.

This has a dual benefit — not only does it make the people being recognised feel good, but it shows others exactly what behaviours you expect from them. This makes it more likely that they’ll replicate it going forward.

Our Employee Experience Lead Laura Lloyd explains:

"Every quarter we hold One Vision awards to celebrate champions who’ve really shown the behaviours we want to encourage as part of the company values. Winners are announced at the awards ceremony which gives us the opportunity to re-emphasise the values. Other people then see Reward points being given for championing those values.

It’s also a great excuse to bring people together on a social level, and we still make sure employees can join the celebration remotely.”

 

By doing these awards consistently, you’ll hammer home the message about your values with each act of appreciation.

Poll winners

It’s not just about senior managers recognising staff. We like to get our employees involved as much as possible too. One way is through a Perkbox Poll Prize Draw — we ask people to vote on various different topics, such as “Who's a great mentor?”, as well as who people think meet our values. This is a great way to engage everybody across our different locations.

Extra support to those who need it

It’s not a reward in the way we’ve discussed so far, but it is true that Reward points can be used as part of your overall benefits offering — particularly in a tough economic environment. As our Chief People Officer Mona Akiki reveals, it’s a way to help people who may be especially affected.

"We gave people a salary increase, but for lower paid employees, we also gave them a one-time deposit of Reward points which they can use in any way they want. Whether it’s groceries or clothing or books — whatever is important for them and their families. That’s one of the great things about Reward points — that choice element."

This leads to a wider point about the cost of living crisis. While businesses want to help their people financially, it’s also important to empower them. In other words, let them take control of their personal situation. It can be tempting to give them a specific voucher to a specific grocery store — but what if they don’t shop there? What if they’re fine with groceries but actually need help getting cheaper wi-fi?

By giving employees choice with Reward points, you can guarantee they’ll find something meaningful to their individual lifestyle.

Encouraging office working

Speaking of helping people during a time of rising costs, we also try to give employees who are coming into the office a little bit extra, in the form of Reward points.

“For things like coming into the office, we’ve provided a lunch subsidy via Reward points” says Mona. So if you’re in the office, you get a certain number of Reward points. That encourages people who might be thinking about things like the cost of travel or lunch — it helps them a bit with that.”

 

Sales incentives

If the idea of rewarding is to drive key behaviours, it makes sense to utilise Reward points. Many of our managers and department heads do this, with one great example coming from our Sales organisation. Director Steve Nicholson gives a bit more detail:

“We've always had access to a Sales Performance Incentive Fund (SPIF) across the global sales organisation at Perkbox. However it was only when we started to use Reward points that we saw this having the most effective impact and value.

The aim was to recognise and drive the right behaviours in the sales team — not simply to reward people for ‘just doing the job’ or executing on regular KPIs or targets. Things like call quality, forecasting accuracy, coaching improvements — these are all key behaviours that would lead to us hitting core results and improve individual and team performance.

The fact that we could globally recognise the team and provide points for people to spend on a variety of options, really helped drive higher levels of engagement.”

It’s not just about things directly related to the business either. For example, Learning & Development is a big focus for us as we want our people to grow professionally and personally. So, whenever employees complete courses on our L&D platform, they earn Reward points. It’s a win-win!

Spot rewarding

This is where you give employees a small amount of Reward points on a frequent basis for completing tasks or reaching small goals. By constantly getting rewards for performing well, their motivation levels will increase. 

There’s a bit of science behind this as well. A study by researchers Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It revealed that people who received immediate rewards for completing smaller tasks were happier and remained more interested in their work.

It’s something managers at Perkbox also do, especially in teams where big objectives are made up of a series of smaller tasks, as Director James Arnall explains.

"The great thing about the Reward points is how easy they are for me to administer as a manager. I have a budget of points allocated to me, and when small tasks which feed into our quarterly objectives are ticked off, it takes me less than a minute to send them. I can send the points while giving a recognition, which allows me to add a congratulatory message and keep that personal touch.” 

The key takeaway

Our reward and recognition offering is a bit like your favourite pair of jeans — it serves a purpose pretty much all year round! These are just some of the methods we use to reward our employees, and hopefully it’ll spark a few more ideas for you to apply across your business.

For more help on getting the most out of Perkbox, get in touch with your Customer Success Manager!