Five Factors in Rewarding Employee Performance

Five Factors in Rewarding Employee PerformanceFive Factors in Rewarding Employee PerformanceFive Factors in Rewarding Employee PerformanceMarch 28, 2012 Hubley Luckwaldt, PayScale.comWant an employee to feel appreciated?The good and bad news is that it takes mora than cash, says Stacey Carroll, director of professional services at online salary database PayScale.com. Driving satisfaction with employees requires work beyond a bump in pay.Beyond a salary negotiation for higher pay,theres the question of how, exactly, to reward employee performance.Here are a few things to consider when recognizing employee performance1. Communication SkillsCarroll tells companies the single best thing they can do to improve employee satisfaction is to use effective communication skills.Ideally, employees should understand how decisions about compensation are made, on what basis, and when they can expect to hear about raises and performance.Employees often equate how much theyre paid with how much theyr e valued, which might not be the case, especially for small business under increasing financial pressures. Keeping them in the loop can help to alleviate this problem.2. BenchmarkingIn large organizations, one employee typically does one job. This isnt the case in small business, where a person might be, say, the accountant, and the facilities manager, and the business manager, as well as coordinating all employee birthday parties, and answering the phone when the receptionist is out.Carroll advises companies to tie salary to the highest skill set that they ask employees to perform on a regular basis via benchmarking.She also recommends looking at your internal hierarchy and compare employees skills and job duties against the people they supervise and against the people who supervise them.3. Consider Non-Financial RewardsCompensation alone will never attract or retain top performers, says Carroll. It has to be supported by all the other things that go on in an organization.This is e specially true for top performers, she adds. Top performers want to work in a place where their performance is acknowledged.This can take the form of offering additional training or other opportunities to be involved with organization at a deeper level, she says.It can also mean offering non-traditional solutions, such as the workplace flexibility of a four-day work week to an employee who values that extra day off, instead of a bump in pay.4. Ask for Employee FeedbackWhich brings us to our next point Sometimes, the best way to find out what employees want is to ask most often by doing an employee satisfaction survey.If youre really, truly trying to understand employees and what motivates them, one of the best things to do is just to ask them, Carroll says. All employees are motivated by something a little bit different.5. Be a Good BossCarroll agrees with the well-known adage, Employees dont leave companies, they leave bosses.Somebody who you genuinely feel is engaged in helping y ou to be successful and giving you opportunities for growth, really cant be supplemented by large sums of money, she says.Instead, strive to be a good boss start by learning to become a good listener.