One of the things that has been central to my work throughout my life was how to reward and motivate people.  In this time of frugality within small businesses, I decided to put together a list of ten ways to reward your staff without money.

•  People like to get time off, so reward your staff who have excelled with a paid day off.

• People also like to feel important and a way of doing that is to get business cards printed for all your staff.  This reminds them of their importance to the organisation and also, every time a card is given to someone, your company is being promoted.
• Mondays are not the most inviting day of the week.  Start off each week with an email or message from you spreading the news on what went right last week, who completed a project well, how well a team is doing and so on.  Do this well, and people will be wanting to appear on the email therefore they will do their jobs even better.
• The average commute to and from work is approx. 2.5 hours daily.  Allow people occasionally, who have a report or a task to complete and can do it at home, to do it from home.  If their frame of mind is good and they can work from home, they will appreciate the 2.5 hours extra in their day.
• Yoga is a good way to reduce stress.  Bring in an instructor once or twice a week at lunchtime to run a class.
• People are being encouraged to spend some of their time on community and voluntary activities.  At the same time, companies are encouraged to participate in charity projects.  You can ‘kill two birds with the one stone’ here by allowing your staff to dedicate some time per annum on their own community and voluntary activities.
• Everybody’s birthday or anniversary is important to them.  Spend some time once per week or month recognising everyone (acknowledge everyone individually).  Buy a cake. Everyone likes cake.
• Every now and then, buy some lottery tickets and give them to your staff.  Someone might win.
• Everyone likes their car to be clean.  Buy a few car washes every week and give them out to people as rewards for work well done.
• Simply say “Thank You” for a job well done.  Recognise their efforts. It’s quite simple really.