Part of the effort involved in leading a remote team is rewarding substantial efforts and being an employer with whom your employers value. For similar reasons, many remote team leaders constantly seek new and unique ways to reward and motivate their teams. However, there are multiple ways to incentivize a remotely distributed team and some of them may even surprise you.
The last thing a company wants to do is give a gift that could negatively impact or demotivate others. You want to be an employer that your team values. Offering gifts, recognition and awards are ways to keep your team happy and incentivized. Otherwise, you might find yourself in an endless cycle of hiring and training new employees and wondering why they keep quitting. It’s important to realize that not everyone is solely motivated by money, and there other essential ways to keep remote teams driven long-term.
1. Provide Free Software And Applications
Various tools that your remote workers use are most likely already paid for by the company, but there are many other free tools that remote workers will genuinely appreciate. Some remote companies offer complimentary subscriptions to music apps like Spotify or even meditation apps like Calm. The idea is that these apps will help them stay focused and less stressed, which will lead to more productive and satisfied employees.
However, if you want to take things a step further and make an even more positive impact on your team of workers, offer to give all workers a monthly stipend to use as they please on approved applications, software or services. These could be anything from home-gym workout apps or even a pre-made food delivery service.
2. Plane Ticket Vouchers Or Vacations
You should know quite a bit about your remote work team by the time you conclude giving a reward. If you have a couple of remote workers, the odds are likely that they also love to indulge in a fair bit of travel. Use this to your advantage while seeking a unique benefit to give them if they hit certain milestones and goals.
If you have remote workers who live in the USA, they might have shared the desire to ski in the Rockies or visit Miami’s beaches. When you prepare the reward for them, offer to give them a voucher to use on an airline and hotel of their choosing. A remote worker will almost always take a gift like this with gratitude.
3. Increase Their Pay (If It Is Earned)
The unfortunate reality of the job market is that most workers can only achieve a sizeable pay increase is when switching companies every two years. It doesn’t have to be this way if employers are willing to give a higher pay raise every year based on merit and performance. It’s essential to keep the best workers from jumping ship, and often a 15-20% raise is warranted if the company genuinely values the best-performing employees.
4. Simple Positive And Public Feedback
Sometimes, the best reward you can give a remote worker is positive and authentic feedback in a public environment. You never know what is going on behind the scenes. After all, your team probably does a lot more work on projects than is ever recognized since working remotely.
To show employees that they matter to you, avoid giving overly critical feedback in public. Of course, there are instances where critical feedback may be necessary. However, if a particular project shows strong evidence of your team going above and beyond, make sure that your feedback echoes your thankfulness.
5. Give Performance Based Bonuses Or Equity
After your remote team turns around great work on a big project, try giving each member a bonus and thanks for their hard work. Random bonuses have a substantial positive impact on your employees in almost every case. However, do these in a planned manner, calculate it into your business expenses, and set aside a specific amount to give away as bonuses. Another option is to give away equity to your top employees since this is a much more proven way to keep the top performers invested in the company long-term.
Keep Individual Cases Open For Unique Rewards
Your remote team is different than any other team in the world. After all, you have the most in-depth understanding of your business and team. Therefore, keep the above ideas in mind, but not as a universal rule of thumb. Sometimes if you can’t figure it out on your own, it might be easiest to ask and communicate with your team on which options they prefer.
After all, your team may require rewards that are entirely different than the ones we mentioned above. To be a great employer that your remote team values, get to know your employees individually and find rewards that best suit who they are.
