Top 10 Ways Points-Based Rewards Are Super Meaningful

When using nominal reward amounts in rewarding employees the typical options available to organizations are cash, points, and gift cards. Researchers have conducted many studies on the benefits of cash versus non-monetary rewards—what about points-based rewards? Further research by Dr. Patricia A. Norberg from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, provides insights from which these Top 10 Ways Points-Based Rewards Are Super Meaningful are based.

1.  People think about points more often. For example, individuals who receive reward points tend to think about and plan out how they plan to use them more so than reward recipients who receive cash or gift cards do.

2.  They’ll even talk about their points more. Think about personal loyalty points you’ve collected. Employees who receive reward points talk about their reward points more often than employees who get cash or gift cards.

3.   Point recipients report higher satisfaction levels. Employees who receive reward points report significantly higher levels of satisfaction with their reward than those reward recipients who got cash or gift cards.

4.   People receiving points remember how they used them. Employees receiving reward points were significantly better at remembering what they used their reward points for than those recipients receiving cash or gift cards.

5.   There’s a higher perceived trophy status with points. Employees perceive points at a higher currency ratio value than associated with cash rewards, making them more meaningful to employees to hold up with pride.

6.   Points get redeemed for more meaningful gifts. Studies show that cash gets used for more utilitarian and practical items such as bills and household necessities. Points get used for meaningful gift items that employees talk about.

7.   Using point-based rewards encourages greater engagement. Employees receiving point rewards engage more with company reward sites than cash, which appears on pay statements, or gift cards they have to top up to use.

8.   There’s greater potential of emotional appeal with points. Point-based rewards have greater emotional appeal to employees than cash. Emotional draw creates intrinsic connection for the employee with their company.

9.  Points generate greater social-emotional impact. If you want a rewards program to create better word-of-mouth promotion across employees and higher levels of employee satisfaction, then points-based rewards appears to fit the bill.

10. Nominal points-based reward programs work. By all accounts, points-based reward programs offer an all round memorable, meaningful, and motivational option to consider in your reward program planning. 

Recognition Reflection: Has the organization clearly defined the benefits of a points-based reward program to our employees?

Roy is no longer writing new content for this site (he has retired!), but you can subscribe to Engage2Excel’s blog as Engage2Excel will be taking Roy’s place writing about similar topics on employee recognition and retention, leadership and strategy.

Remember To Tell People When and When Not To Give Rewards

Recognition programs coupled with the use of rewards can challenge managers and employees, especially when you just launch a new program. 

It seems managers and employees alike are like kids in a candy store. With a myriad of good intentions, they lavish out rewards on everyone. And the reasons are often spotty at best.

Which is why you must always handle your rewards with care. 

This matter has come up for a couple of clients in the last few months, so it seemed fitting to bring it up here as well.

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The Right Balance of Recognition to Reward Programs

One of the many challenges in managing a recognition and rewards program is figuring out how to steer the course of your programs to maximum impact. 

And one repeated concern I see is when program owners inherit a program, they call recognition, but it’s been almost a total rewards program. Getting rid of the rewards mindset that triggers entitlement, expectations, and “more please”, is hard to unlearn. 

Providers, compensation and benefits associations, and non-profit business research organizations give good estimates on how much money to spend. They draw upon a percentage of your payroll budget or the average dollar spent per full-time equivalent (FTE) of employees. 

But what’s missing is how much to spend on the different programs. Is there a perfect balance between recognition specific programs and reward type program? How do you advocate budgets based on how people use the different types of programs? 

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Interesting Insights on The Cash versus Tangible Rewards Debate

In reading Khim Kelly’s, Associate Professor of Accounting, from the University of Florida, and her team’s research on The Effects of Tangible Rewards versus Cash Rewards in Consecutive Sales Tournaments: A Field Experiment, I learned some fascinating insights.

It piqued my interest because it was a field study and not one of those in the university lab experiments. The setting was selling rugs in retail stores and incentivizing sales people with either cash or tangible rewards (gift cards from a choice of vendors) for achieving high-performance results over two consecutive sales campaigns, each of three months in length. The study was conducted in a Canadian retail store chain. The Incentive Research Federation has shown that companies are relying more heavily on tangible rewards these days over cash, as a reward vehicle with their various incentive and reward campaigns.

Does one work better than another? That is the question I was curious about. (more…)

Sure Fire Ways To Get Leaders On Board with Recognition

Some leaders get it and some don’t. There are those who have strong people skills and understand the value of giving recognition well. Then are the others who question the purpose of recognition and the expense associated with it.

How can you guarantee getting leadership support and their personal commitment to making recognition happen?

Think about the following ten steps before heading into a meeting with a leader or your senior leadership team. (more…)

You Can Get Unstuck From Rewards With Recognition

One of my Rideau colleagues recently shared with me their observations of how many mid- to large-sized businesses are challenged with how to transition more away from rewards towards recognition.

Then within a week of this conversation one of our blog subscribers at a financial services company wanted to know how to reduce their budget costs and lessen the amount of gross up tax spend on their gift card rewards program.

So, it seems the topic of rewards is in the air again!

Since many companies are using rewards it only makes sense I should share with you how best to transition from, or lessen, your use of rewards and move towards more recognition, or at least a happy medium between the two. (more…)