A lot of industries these days are facing labor shortages. Nearly 30% of union electricians are close to retirement. The HVAC industry is currently short about 110,000 technicians.
Let’s talk about how a rewards program can sustain, train, and retain your workforce.
First, let’s talk about sustaining the motivation of your workforce.
Sustaining Motivation
First, offer non-cash rewards. Don’t get me wrong. Cash rewards have their place. They’re great when you want a quick turnaround for your sales promotions. But people tend to think about cash rewards the same way they think about salary. You have to offer increasingly larger cash rewards to get the same motivation. Instead, offer tangible, non-cash items that people can talk about and show off.
Implement peer recognition programs where employees can nominate each other for rewards. This builds a supportive culture where people share in their success.
Reward for milestone achievements. That includes things like work anniversaries, completion of big projects, or gaining new skills. Milestone rewards help you create a culture where long-term commitment is celebrated.
Enhance Training
Training is more than just skill development—it’s about keeping your team engaged and eager to learn. Rewards can help you take training to the next level.
Reward without warning! Surprise rewards really light up the brain. This engagement can have a major impact on how well people remember information, so use unexpected rewards in training sessions.
Reward employees for acing training courses and earning certifications. Keeping up with all the constantly changing technology and standardizations is hard. Show your support for your employees’ career growth by rewarding their efforts.
Integrate your reward program with your learning management system. You can have multimedia training content, like videos, quizzes, and courses. When your target audience gets instant rewards for training success, in a seamless experience on one platform? That just reinforces training motivation even more.
Reward using gamification. For example, provide a public leaderboard tracking everyone’s progress. This adds the thrill of winning, the drama of trash-talking, the high stakes of competition! The more emotionally engaged your audience is, the more they’re learning.
Retain Employees
Whether you want to retain employees, your internal sales reps, your channel partners – you have to make people feel long-term value to achieve that retention. Here’s how rewards can help you do that.
A points-based reward program, as opposed to a program based on debit or gift cards, is a good strategy for long-term retention of sales reps or employees. People get invested in programs where they’re steadily earning points over time, maybe even saving up for specific items like TVs, laptops, home goods, etc.
Change things up! The biggest advantage of a rewards program is how versatile it is, so don’t let it become old news. From hitting sales targets to adopting new work practices, diversify the actions your audience can take to earn points.
Provide extra reasons to visit your site every day, such as opportunities to earn rewards with daily trivia questions. That incentive to engage with your brand daily builds mindshare and engagement.
With a dynamic rewards program focused on sustaining enthusiasm, training effectively, and retaining talent, your workforce won’t just grow—it will thrive.
Start building a rewards program that does all these things and watch your team’s potential unfold.
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-is-trying-to-electrify-there-arent-enough-electricians-4260d05b
https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2024/03/15/plumber-shortage-is-gumming-up-the-us-economy