Facilitating groups in a meeting room can be a painless task when you have engagement strategies that work. People want to be energized about topics, incented to contribute their ideas, and rewarded when the group produces its desired results. Those feelings don’t end in the meeting room. Employees want to be recognized and appreciated for their hard work continuously – and not just during Employee Appreciation Week.

What are some ways to reward your employees?

At Leadership Strategies, we believe nurturing employees in an environment that acknowledges productive behavior and extraordinary efforts is important. Rewarding our staff can be impactful and, yet, simple. Here are some easy ways we engage and appreciate our workforce:

Half-Day Friday

Allow staff to leave at noon on Fridays. To avoid interrupting regular business operations, use a rotating schedule where one person per group (depending on the group/department/division size) must stay to manage urgent matters should they come up. One stipulation: employees must have worked a full 40-hour work week by the time they leave at noon.

Roll the Dice for Gifts

For our strategic planning monitoring, we check the status of deliverables each month. Each initiative team that meets its results elects one person from the group to “roll the dice” for a gift, which could be a $5 gift card, a free half-day off, movie tickets, or other goodies. Recognizing groups for meeting deliverable deadlines is a good reinforcement of behavior (and keeps teams feeling motivated).

Quarterly Outings

Sure, they’re typically fun stress relievers, but taking your group out for a group event is an excellent team building opportunity too. Reward your staff by allowing them to choose the activity or event. Motivate them to work hard – and play hard too.

Here are 25 more (free) ways to reward your employees – HR World’s “25 Ways to Reward Employees (Without Spending a Dime)” by Dan Tynan.

How else do you reward your team?