How To Reward Your Employees? – 2024 Guide for Startups

One of the most challenging parts of being a startup founder is to make sure that your team members are happy and they are motivated to deliver the best results.

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The logic is simple – motivated employees are productive employees. That’s why one of the best ways to ensure your team member’s contentment is by coming up with a solid reward strategy and creating incentive programs.

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In this article, we will tell you all about the value of setting up incentive programs for your startup team members and give you some examples that you can use to better motivate your employees.

What Is the Value of Creating a Reward Strategy for Your Team Members?

Statistics show that more than half of organisations globally have problems with retaining their most valuable employees.

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If you want to see your team members thrive and deliver great results, you should think about motivating them and making them feel valued in the company.

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Setting up proper incentives for your team members is essential for running a successful business. It can help you boost your team member’s morale and drive higher engagement within them. That’s why the incentives service market size was valued at more than $3.9 billion in 2021.

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In addition, research shows that most of the workers feel more motivated to give their best performance when they have an incentive. Increased motivation leads to stronger retention and engagement with team members in the company, which can benefit your business in the long run.

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So, what are the different ways to make sure your team members are motivated and driven to deliver the best results?
Let’s have a look.

Share Your Company Value and Build an Employee Incentive Plan

One of the most effective ways to give your team members a sense of ownership and make them part of the success is setting up an incentive plan and giving them the opportunity to buy out company shares at a predetermined price.

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The most popular and widespread way to achieve that is by setting up an Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP)and giving out share options to your team members as part of the compensation.

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This is a cost-effective way to attract talent and encourage them to stay in the company long-term.

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To make sure your team members understand the value of the benefit you're offering, it is important to educate them on this topic and answer all of their questions.

Give Extra Benefits to Employees

Including various benefits in the company’s compensation package is crucial for business. It can be a significant factor for an individual to choose to work with you.

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Benefits help company contributors (employees, contractors, etc.) take time off when needed, take care of their health, save for retirement, and more. They are types of compensation that you should provide in addition to salary.

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Offering different kinds of benefits to your team members can increase the value of joining a certain organisation and upgrade your company contributors’ quality of life.

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Candidates often look at the benefits that companies offer when they are applying for a job. They take this factor into consideration in addition to salary during the job-searching process.

What Types of Benefits Can You Offer?

There are many different types of benefits that companies can offer to their team members. The most common ones include:

• Medical coverage
  This is the most widely used benefit that companies offer to their employees. Typically, it covers costs associated with health checkups, appointments, or procedures.
• Opportunity to work remotely
  Giving the flexibility to work remotely has become increasingly popular over the last couple of years, allowing your team members to work from different locations while travelling or spending more time with their families at home.
• Extra time off
  Another common benefit to offer is extra time off. It can be categorised as study leave, family leave, extra holidays, etc. These cases can be different for each of your team members.

Offer Professional Development Opportunities

Many companies worldwide give extra budgets to their employees for learning and development purposes. It can cover costs for attending a training course, going to a conference, or signing up for an online programme to improve certain skills.

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Early-stage startups can really benefit from their team member’s professional development in many ways.

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First of all, companies that offer professional development opportunities to their team members have higher retention rates, which is very important for any kind of organisation in this day and age.

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Secondly, employees feel more loyal to the companies that help them grow and develop. That’s why it is extremely important to invest in your team members’ professional development to make sure that they grow and learn while contributing to your company’s growth.

How To Encourage Professional Development in the Workplace?

There are a few ways to successfully motivate your team to take part in professional development initiatives:

• You can create internal mentorship programs that can help your team members come together, share their ideas, and learn from each other.
• List conferences where your team members can participate and learn more about their industry from other professionals.
• Give them a learning budget, which they can use to purchase a membership for online or physical courses.
• Invite professionals to your company to teach your team members on a specific topic e.g. how to coach or how to solve disagreements.

Create a Positive Workplace Environment

Creating a positive work environment for your employees is important. People who love the company they work for will do everything to help the company thrive.

Whether it’s an early-stage startup or a bigger organisation, if the company culture reflects your employee’s values, in turn, they are more efficient and effective in the work they do. In fact, according to the research, 94% of entrepreneurs say that a healthy culture at work is vital for success.

A positive work environment can boost your team member’s productivity. It can also help them develop a growth mindset, which means that individuals would focus more on taking over new initiatives and improving their skills, which will benefit the company in the long run.

So How Can Salto X Help?

Here at Salto X, we understand the challenges that might be associated with creating a proper reward strategy and incentivizing your team members in an early-stage startup.

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We help founders easily create and manage their company’s incentive program throughout the whole employee incentive experience.

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The solution is especially useful for remote teams that have to deal with different countries’ legislation to share the company’s success.

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Would you like to hear more? We’d love to jump on a call with you for a further discussion.