Hi. It's Mike Davis again. We're back to talk bout non-monetary rewards. So far, I hopefully have made the case about why non-monetary rewards are important and why every company should think about it as a key part of their total rewards program. We just went through a segment looking at how valued these benefits are to employees and what a difference they make. We're going to now look at more deeply the value to employers, but we're going to begin by once again revisiting the Total Rewards Model. Again, this is Zingheim & Schuster's Total Rewards Model, in their book Pay People Right. You can find it on the internet, too. And from their studies, these are the things that they found when people talk about their jobs and talk about what they like. They tend to mention various factors that are showing on the spread. You'd think it would be all about compensation and benefits and in fact it is to an extent, but it's not in the grand scheme of things. It's all these other factors combined that people talked about. So let's go back and think about employers for a second. What are they doing? Well first and foremost, they're trying to run a business. And to do so, they're going to need employees, and they're going to have to know how to do certain things. So they're going to have to have certain skillsets, and possibly personality traits, and they're going to have to know how to do their jobs. So when it comes around to pay every employer knows you have pay fairly, but often times what isn't as clear is that compensation itself is not enough. That you really need, as an employer, to do more. So again staying with employers they want to make the job and the company look attractive. And it's competitive no matter where you are around the world, employees have choices when it comes to work. What you want to do is think about how to attract the people who you really want. And how to make that company look very unique and special compared to all the other choices. How are you going to do this? Again if we go back to the grid, non-monetary rewards is a great way to do it. It's hard to do that with just pay. And if we take another Zingheim & Schuster idea, they really are big on finding win-win solutions. And very simply those are wins for the employer, and wins for the employee so as this non-monetary reward is thought of it works for both sides. So some examples, and again non-monetary rewards can do a lot of different things. It can show the values of the company and the owner. That's often important to people. It can attract a certain type of employee. We talked previously maybe the employer wants a lot of part-time employees to help facilitate flexible work schedules. You can motivate performance with non-monetary rewards. You can make yourself look different. It can be part of building a reputation as the employer. Or even more importantly, people might stay because they like what you're doing in this area. The key here, and it's underscored, money is not always the motivator, in fact it's often not the best motivator. So you think how much does this cost? Well amazingly, most non-monetary benefits don't cost hardly anything, or the cost is very low. And think of a simple example I have up here, that a company wants to have a value of honesty and integrity, it wants to attract into the company people who value that trait and probably exhibit themselves, so what do they do. They talk about it. They recognize people for it. They make hiring decisions and promotion decisions. They have an open door policy inside the company to talk about it. And most importantly, they make sure what they do matches this value. So as you can see, try to think well, what would cost a lot about any of those five steps, really not very much. But if you value that as an employer or as an employee, huge value and again very little money spent in the process. So employer of choice is an idea we're going to come back to multiple times, and smart companies if you think about it, they want a good reputation. They understand the value of employee word of mouth, the best job candidates come in the door because other employees have said this is a great place to work. So being an employer of choice is just the way it sounds, that when people have choices, they might include or only include you. So, again, I'm taking some notes here from the Zingheim & Schuster work. They view a way to tell if you're succeeding here is that applicants want to work for you, you're getting resumes without having to work very hard, and you're best, talented people stay with you. This is an example of a win-win. It's great for the company, great for the employee. Now recognition has another kind of important piece to this. And, sadly it's so easy to do, and it's easy to overlook. It's a real missed opportunity. And the thing about recognition of being a company that just prides itself on it, is there's so many ways to do it. And, some of the informal methods are the best. A heartfelt thank-you means a lot. You might go home and actually say, I got complimented at work today. I got a big thanks. Or a celebration of the team that did something big. We're going to look at an example of this later. Could be more formal that once a year there's an award program of a certain kind. Or it could simply be a contest. The point is is that employees feel good about this, they feel appreciated. And if done right it can also drive performance for the company. So what are the patterns we see here? The best companies think about total awards more holistically and their mindset goes to these non monetary rewards that supplement cash pay. Employers of choice, they treat their employees well. They have a great reputation and they get a great workforce because of it. They think about more than just pay and they're very successful. And the non-monetary rewards help them do it. Again, it's win-win solutions. The only thing about this is you've got to be creative. You can't afford to have narrow thinking. Think what would make a difference in my workplace. So far, we've discussed the importance of non-monetary rewards. We've just looked at the value to employees and employer. Now we're going to take a deeper dive into three of the main programs that appear in non-monetary rewards and we're going to start with recognition.
